Two Days Down, Countless To Go

I've worked out two days in a row. I'd like to say I've broken some kind of personal record in the recent weeks but, I always manage to get at least 2 days together. It's that third, fourth and fifth day that elude me. We'll see what is in store for tomorrow.

I have a Doctor's appointment in a week and a day. Nothing like that looming ahead on the calender to get your butt in gear for the mad dash to try and budge the scale at least a few pounds downward, especially if it has been about a month since you've seen her last.

I was diagnosed as a diabetic about 9 years ago. The very next day, my father died (ironically enough due to complications of diabetes). Let's just say I went all ostrich and buried my head in the sand for the next near decade. Oh sure, I came out a few times, tried to get my life back on track... the motivation would only last a month or so. The weight is so much harder to come off when you have Type 2 Diabetes, and while it is not impossible of a task, it was impossible for my mind set at the time. So, in to the sand my head would go again.

What brought my head out of the sand this time? Pain. I've always had nerve pain in my feet. For those of you who don't know me, well I would rather go into labor with another child than deal with this neuropathy in my feet. At least I know that labor would be over at some point. But with nerve pain, the burning, stinging, tingling, prickling, numbing fire that lays just beneath the surface of the skin is ever present and ever constant. I knew that my feet had been hurting worse over the last few months, worsening by the day. I also had no prescriptions for nerve pain medication because I hadn't seen a doctor in quite some time. So while going through some old boxes from when we moved to this house back in August, I found my blood testing kit. I took my blood sugar and it was 375.

I cried.

I've never had blood sugar that high, even when I was diagnosed. I cried because of how I had completely worsened my condition by not doing anything about it. By not realizing the seriousness of this disease, or by not caring how serious it is. I think you can go into a diabetic coma at 400. Heck, I don't even know! That's something I should know. Needless to say, I made an appointment the very next morning. (Beginning of April).

So in addition to an A1C of  9.6 (which is better than the 11.4 I tested at a decade before), I have teensy weensy high blood pressure. Too low levels of good cholesterol and too high levels of bad. No surprise or shocker there. My medicine cabinet looks like a pharmacy. I remember as a kid and adolescent, looking into my parents medicine cabinet, and not finding normal things like Tylenol, Bandaids, Antibiotic Ointment ect, but pill after pill bottle of things I had no idea what they were for. It looked like a pharmacy. When we traveled, my parents always had a travel bag set aside for medications. And not a little one that you could fit into your purse or duffle bag but a bag of it's own to keep both their medications in. I wonder if my brain accepted this as normal and so now that I'm an adult, I have followed in that same path. My medicine cabinet looks like a pharmacy.

I remember Dr. Hanna telling me I was a diabetic but that I was young enough I could manage it and most likely put it into remission. Like it was some sort of cancer only I had the power to heal myself of it. I wish I would have listened. Just add that to my list of regrets in life. Let's hope that I can get myself on track that at least the second half of my life will be healthier and longer than my first half.

A year and a half? Really?

Sometimes I think that I only keep this blog around to visit every few years, change layouts, spiff it up, make promises that I'll never keep and then fade back into obscurity. It's weird to think that I was such an avid, dare I say, active online journalist back in the early 2000s (circa 2001-02). I look back to those old entries from my time spent at Diaryland and I can't believe that I ever had time to post something almost every single day! Of course, I was a lot more disciplined with my commitment to losing weight and only having 1 child at the time, and being a stay-at-home Mom might have contributed to my having more time back in the day.

Side note: I look at Diaryland now and all the journals that I used to read are defunct now. It seems that between 2003 and 2005 there was this mass exodus from the grandfather of free online diaries. Poor Andrew. Sadly, I just think he charged too much for his "gold" membership that were features given for free from Blogger and other online diaries at the time. Blogger seems to have held up pretty well through the years though and lucky for me, they don't delete journals that have owners who are all too willy-nilly with their consistency on when they put entries up.

But ANYWAY....

So I don't even know what to call what I'm doing right now. Maybe a desperate act of a last ditch effort to not go into my 40s being overweight. Or maybe I'm just trying to improve on my health that I have run into the ground for the last 8 years. Sometimes I still think that I haven't gotten it. That it hasn't clicked for me. That my goal should be health and not being slimmer. It's such a fine line to walk when the pursuit for a healthier life often leads you to the results of being slimmer. I think I tell myself all the time that I want to be healthier but in being honest with ya'll and myself, yeah, if I had to work really hard to improve my health but I would forever be this size? Not a real upside for me there.

And here is the part where you guys are going to want to strangle me. I have a man in my life and I want to look good for him. What? Did I just say that? As women we are so often taught we do not need men to validate us, we don't need men to have babies, we don't need men to provide for us, we don't even need men to take out the trash and lock the doors at night. The thought of trying to be slimmer for a man might just set women's liberation back 100 years. I am blessed and lucky that I have a man who loves me for who I am. He doesn't push me to lose the weight. He supports my efforts in being healthy but most of all he supports me in doing what it takes to just FEEL better in my own skin. I just want to love being in this body. Right now, my reality is that I just don't. It's created two wonderful children and well it's the body I have and I need to respect it and take better care of it. Is it so wrong if I add onto that a desire to look good for the man I love? I'm a very sexual being and frankly, I'm just not feeling it with the weight on. I'm just not at a point in my physical state that I can do all the things I want to do in the bed or out so, the options? Either complain about it, put myself down for STILL being fat or move on and just get with the program and surrender to the process no matter how hard it might be. I have to surrender to this process and the amount of time it is going to take.

Days are going to go by anyway, years are going to go by whether I want them to or not. I can either be doing something productive or I can be gaining 15 lbs. in 18 months. It's time to nip this in the bud.

Although I do have to say 15 lbs in 18 months is probably the slowest weight gain I've had in my entire life!

So, short term goal? I'm looking to be under 200 by the last weekend of October. That's when I see my guy again (it's a long distance relationship) and I think that's a good, reasonable goal. If not, I'll re-evaluate.

I've signed up for Lost It! which is a website that will track food and exercise and I'm looking to download an app on my phone that helps with meal planning and grocery shopping lists. I need all the help I can get. I plan to work out 6 days a week for the first 6 weeks. I'm working out to the first "The Biggest Loser" DVD they came out with after Season 2. (Yes, it has been sitting on the shelf that long. Don't judge.) At the end of this self-imposed boot camp in 6 weeks, I'll move on to something else but I just need to commit to this process for 6 weeks. That's my goal. 6 weeks.

In addition to this online journal, I have an organizing calendar date book that I'm going to be keeping track of everything. I'm not going to feel guilty or beat myself up if I don't post stuff here, as long as I'm still on track and keeping tabs in my date book. I won't be a slave to Blogger, but I do hope that it will offer me that place to reflect on my thoughts and maybe, should I gain a loyal reader or two, some accountability. Even that is a double edge sword. You post your life online and you honestly open yourself up to the opinions of people that don't have your best interests at heart. That can often be painful and non-productive.

I guess I won't know what this journey, this time, is going to be like. I'm curious to know, and a little bit scared. Scared I won't be successful again and maybe a bit scared I will.

New Year's

Another year and another resolution. What's my resolution this year? Well for one, to stop lying to myself about how this year is going to be the year that I actually keep a resolution. My next resolution isn't to lose weight per se, but to try and be healthy for 6 weeks.

I'm going to see a friend in Arizona in 6 weeks and yes, I want to be looking good so I'm sort of putting myself through a self-imposed boot camp. By "self-imposed" I mean that I have lofty goals and ideas of what I want to do, all of which I'll accomplish maybe 10% of and in 6 weeks regret the 4 weeks I didn't do a darn thing.

I'm being realistic here people!

I want to work out 5 days a week starting tomorrow. I want to do my boot camp DVD and some kickboxing and some stomach workouts. I think the main areas that I want to work on are my arms, my stomach, and lifting my boo-tay. Those are the areas that I hate most about my body. Could I lose more other places? Oh sure, the thunder thighs for one but I'm only going to concentrate on a few select areas for the first 6 weeks.

So, another year and another chance. I'm predicting I'll look very different for my birthday this year. 37 is going to rock even my socks off.

I haven't weighed

So I haven't gotten on the scale monster because I haven't worked out. My eating hasn't been exactly... terrible... but there is room for improvement. I don't think I have gained much, if any at all. My ankles still look skinny. That's scientifically sound, right?

I'll bite the bullet and get on the scale Monday. My first day off from work in six days. I never have time to weigh first thing in the morning because I end up getting out of bed nearly 20 minutes before I have to leave and I'm running around the house like a chicken who didn't hear her alarm clock. By the time I get home, I've had at least lunch (if not breakfast too) and water, and you know, I just don't like to weigh when there isn't the best possible possibility of a loss. Don't act like you don't do that too...

Alright, Monday, we'll see what the damage is. Hoping it is minimal and who knows, maybe I might possibly get off my tired butt and do some weight loss yoga.

Off with a bang

Well, I'm off on to this journey with a bang. I weighed today and I'm up 4.4 lbs. Yippee.

Ugh.

Okay so looking at it realistically  I know that I only exercised 2 out of 6 days. That might have had something to do with it. Also, the last time I weighed was after having a serious case of the flu. I was so dehydrated from not being able to keep anything down. I expected to see a gain today for that very reason alone but I didn't expect it to be nearly 4 and a half pounds. In a week! It's just so disheartening. I had hoped to be 199 by this Saturday, November 17. My 36th birthday. Doesn't look like I'm going to make that goal. I guess any closer to 199 that I can get is an accomplishment.

I'm just going to have to get back into the groove. I need to commit myself to 5 days of working out a week. It's hard with work and school and kids but If I'm ever going to get to where I want, it's just going to have to be done. You can't keep doing the right things and continually get the wrong results. So I need to start putting those right things into motion.

I've gotta take the gain and turn it into something that motivates me to do even better this week. I can't keep looking at it that I have to once again, re-lose the weight that I already lost. At least that is what I'm trying to tel myself here! Stay positive!

What was your moment of truth?

My moment of truth came by way of fear. My aunt was very sick and so was my mother and father. All three of them have or have had diabetes and none of them have taken care of themselves. My father and mother were in the hospital and both are under 50 years of age. As I talked to each on the phone, I felt scared that in 25 years, I could be having the same conversation with my children. My father was already blind and has since had his leg amputated to just above the knee. My now late aunt had both of her feet amputated and was nearly blind as well. I was scared that was going to be me.

My best friend had up and moved back home following a visit to her family. I was very depressed and slipping deeper and deeper everyday. I was constantly yelling at my son (who we shall call the kid) and sometimes for no real reason. I couldn't sleep and I cried constantly. Finally, I knew that I had to do something. I wasn't snapping out of this rut. My husband (who we'll call the hunk, cause well he is) began to notice my decline and urged me to seek a doctor's help. If anything, he could at least give me something to help me sleep and we felt that in itself would help my mood.

As I sat there in the doctor's office, there was a mirror next to the examining table. I could see my reflection but I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Just 5 previous minutes before, I had topped the scales at 285 pounds. "Dear God" I thought. What had me even more saddened was that I knew that wasn't my highest weight, although I have no real documentation of a higher non-pregnancy weight number. But the depression I was in, had left me with little appetite (for once!) and I'm sure I dropped a few pounds before going in that doctor's office.

I sat in that examining room and cried. I cried at the sight of myself. A size 26 tub of fat who let herself become everything she hated in herself. On some level, I realized I must of been suicidal to let myself get so huge. I was killing myself slowly for the love of food and hatred for eating it. My doctor ordered some blood work and an EKG. On top of everything else happening to me, I could now add high blood pressure to the mix. I got medicine to help with depression and sleep and of course he gave me a 1200-1500 calorie-a-day diet sheet. But that was it. Not how to change my eating habits, or how to face what made me eat in the first place. He told me to walk 30 minutes a day and come back in 2 weeks to check on my blood pressure and blood work again.

Upon returning 2 weeks later, I had only walked a few times. I couldn't do much more than that. But I had lost 2 pounds. I didn't want to know that I could gain those 2 pounds back. I felt like this was my start. This was opportunity opening itself to me to start making a change in my life. It had been given to me. The results of my blood work only confirmed my fears and spurned me to move forward. I was knocking on the door of Diabetes and it was opening. I was told that if I gained anymore weight, that would be it. My cholesterol was also high. I realized that you couldn't escape the bad habits that you put your body through. There was no escape. Just because you seem healthy, feel healthy doesn't mean you ARE healthy or that you will continue to stay that way. It WILL catch up with you. I was eating triple cheeseburgers from Wendy's 2-3 times a week. That's excessive yes, but I had only had that habit for probably about 2-3 months, as compared to a lifetime of being overweight.

I could feel my arteries clogging, even if it was dramatized in my own mind. I had to do something and do it today. I had 2 pounds lost already and I made a choice to see those numbers go downward for the first time in my life instead of upward. That was my moment of truth. Knowing I would die at a young age. Or worse, live through illness after complicated illness. Living a life of being sick, immobile, blind and amputated. If you can call that living.

That entry was written on July 1, 2002. It was the first epiphany I had about my health and weight loss. I had changed my life and in a year, I had lost 59 lbs. and went from size 26 to 18. I felt great! However that was to be short lived. After that year, I started to struggle. I struggled with complete lack of motivation, depression and over eating. I gained nearly all the weight back. It was devastating. Soon after, I got pregnant with my second child and gained the rest of the weight back plus some. I managed to take off 50 lbs. but still, I couldn't manage to keep it off.

After moving my family back to New Mexico, and moving back into the workforce for the first time in over 11 years, I began to lose weight again. 89 lbs. and counting. I just hope that this time will be the last time that I have to start over. I'm crossing my fingers, eyes, and legs!