Backsliding

I’m frustrated with myself.  Yes, I need to practice what I preach and be kind to myself, but some days it’s difficult.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I started out with a healthy breakfast, but after that the healthy eating took a horrible left turn down Junk Food Street and got lost on the wrong side of the Good Eating tracks. Pretty much stayed there until dinner. (Although I don’t think I’d call homemade pizza “healthy”, it’s better than what I’d been doing the rest of the day. Plus, there was spinach involved.)

I spent the day chained to my desk in a way I haven’t been for months. We were short handed and it was just an overwhelmingly busy day.  I can’t make any excuse for my lunch choice other than blaming stress, but even that’s a pretty pathetic excuse when I had a full hour.

I walked roughly 4,000 steps yesterday. I’ve usually done that many by 1pm.  I felt awful. I only drank about 1/2 a gallon of water yesterday, too. (I usually knock out a gallon/day.)  PMDD was kicking my ass in the worst way.  Cramps, bloating, depression, cravings.  I gave into all of it.  I made it through the day without any emotional outbursts, but once I got home…I crashed and burned.  I knew I would if I didn’t get some exercise.  I wanted to take the kids to the gym, but after an unsavory report from the babysitter, I decided against it.  Plus, dinner had to be made and I didn’t sleep well the night before. Excuses excuses excuses.

I fell asleep before 8pm. (Thank God for my wonderful husband – he got up and took care of the kiddos so I could wallow and pass out.)  I woke up at around 10:45pm completely confused.  I barely remembered Rick getting up for work. I didn’t make his lunch or anything.  I was sleeping in the shirt I’d worn to work, bra and panties.  My chest was sweating when I woke up and I thought it was nearly morning.  I got up and realized what was going on… changed into something more comfortable… let the dogs out.  I had a snack (small bowl of Special K w/ Berries) – I didn’t need it, per se, but I wanted it.  I sat up until almost midnight, then went back to bed.  I slept until 5:30am.

Doing better today.  It’s a new day.  I can’t let every setback knock me down.

What I do need to realize is that I will likely have a day of binge eating each month due to my hormonal ridiculousness.  Because of that, I need to make less bad choices at other times.  I ate more queso over the past weekend than I care to admit!  And we had strawberry lemonades with vodka on Friday night.  Popcorn… etc, etc.  If I know I’m going to turn into an emotional eating disaster once a month, I need to prepare for it better throughout the month by not having as many “bad” days when I’m emotionally stable.

I’m also staying away from the scale. It’s not going to help me to see my bloated self reflected in numbers on a scale. I’ll wait until Friday to weigh again. 

Today… I’m hitting the gym after work with the kids. (They’d better be well-behaved today!  If they act like total monsters, I may just make them watch me play the Wii all evening!!!) And I wore my sneakers to work (casual week – yay!), so maybe I’ll be more inclined to go for a walk in this god-forsaken heat.  I’ve planned for more fruits and veggies today.  I’m down 1/2 a gallon of water already. I’ll repair the damage done yesterday.

I will forgive myself for backsliding.

I won’t let one meal, one day, one week define me.

Curse you, TOM!

It’s that time of the month (TOM) when we women feel bloated and sluggish. It happens to most, if not all, of us.  This time of the month is always my biggest hurdle.  I tell myself I won’t get on the scale for a good week and a half…or I say, “This month, I won’t eat junk food! I can be stronger than that!”  But, inevitably, I eat something I shouldn’t (or several things I shouldn’t) and I get on the scale and curse my hormones, my willpower, etc.

This is the part of the post where I’d love to say, “I’m not doing it this month!” but it’s too late for that already!

I’ve been craving chocolate something fierce.  I haven’t indulged too many times, but the times I have were not good.  I shared a pack of the Hershey Drops – so yummy. And two nights ago, I had an oreo “parfait” from Wendy’s. (That was sickeningly sweet. Somehow, I powered through!! haha) And last night…well… last night my husband and I ordered Dominos. We split an order of stuffed cheesy bread, each had a few slices of a medium pizza (topped with mushrooms, spinach, red peppers and BACON)…and…there were a couple of chocolate lava crunch cakes involved.  Good god. 

And today?  Today, my body HATES me for it.  Not just a little bit.  We’re talking (cover your eyes if you’re squeamish, folks) full on diarrhea madness over here.  Ugh.  I haven’t felt this miserable in months! Add to that the impending period and you have a crampy, tired, miserable Sara. Ugh. 

There’s a silver lining, though.

No, really, there is.

I’ve made much healthier choices for every other meal this week.  Normally PMS time is a strap-on-the-feed-bag-and-let’s-go-athon. Mickey D’s for breakfast, Jimmy John’s for lunch, several pieces of candy from the candy bowl, ice cream after dinner (two helpings of dinner!)… And NO EXERCISE.  That was mebefore. Therefore, me now isn’t doing quite so badly.  I got on the scale this morning (against the aforementioned better judgement) and was only up 1.2lbs.  I’m still drinking at least a gallon of water each day, just the occasional caffeinated beverage (had some diet Coke last night with our Dominos extravaganza). And I still did about 30 minutes of Wii Just Dance last night, in addition to walking on 2 of my 3 breaks.

I’ve definitely done worse.

Something I keep hearing over and over echos in my head – “Be kind to yourself.” 

I once saw a post on facebook that said, “If your friends spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, you wouldn’t hang out with them any more.”  How true is that?

I’m not perfect. I never will be.  I’m not going to just eat carrot sticks for four months and marvel at my weight loss only to gain it all back when I stop.

This isn’t about dieting.

This isn’t a crash course in fitness.

These are LIFE CHANGES. This isn’t something I will be doing for six months, a year, two years – I will never be “done” – because the minute I stop, I will be headed right back in the opposite direction.

This is about making better choices, one meal at a time, one day at a time.

Granted, my body is punishing me plenty, but I choose not to punish myself otherwise.  I know I feel better when I make better choices. That’s my reward.

 

Be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up.

Especially during that time of the month (TOM) – because, let’s face it, you’re already moody enough without adding to it, right?  🙂

Mom’s Gastric Bypass (and various ramblings)

Today was Mom’s surgery.  I took off from work and headed to the hospital after dropping my youngest off at school (he considers this a big treat, which is pretty cool – usually Rick takes him because of our schedules).  I was joined at the hospital by my stepdad, sister and aunt (Mom’s sister) – all there to support her.  Everything went great – she’s experienced zero complications and even got up for a slow walk before I left around 5pm.

I got disoriented as I left – I just didn’t want to be there any more and couldn’t even explain why. I just wanted to go home.  It hadn’t been an especially taxing day. If anything, it had been really nice to catch up with my aunt as I hadn’t seen her in quite a while.  Still, I got off on the wrong floor, went the wrong way, etc, etc.  Finally, I made it out of the building.

As I was leaving the parking lot, I had to pay for parking.  They only accept cash or checks and I had no cash on me (poor planning on my part), so I wrote a check for $4 and handed it to the clerk.  I gave her a second to look it over, then she raised the bar, so I rolled forward.

“Wait! Ma’am! You put the wrong date on the check – this says 6/1, today’s the 31st! You have to fix this.”

I couldn’t back up because of the line behind me that was already rolling forward, so she leaned out the window and handed me the check and pen…so I could just adjust what I’d already written and make it say 5/31.  I was flustered and aggravated.  Couldn’t she have done that herself?? I mean really. And it was after 5pm by then – they weren’t going to deposit today anyhow. Good grief.

As I drove away, I got myself so angry that I started crying.  What the hell is wrong with me? I thought.  Why am I crying over something so stupid??

Yes, I’m PMSing.  I actually take Sarafem (a fancy name for Prozac you take 2 weeks/month) for my PMDD.  But still… there was something else going on.

Then it hit me.  Today had been a lot more emotionally taxing than I’d admitted to myself at that point.  I hate to sound so selfish…but, well… this is MY blog and it should be about ME, right?

I was supposed to be getting weight loss surgery around the same time as Mom – within about a month of her, actually.  I wassupposed to be there not only as support, but to see how this all goes for her, to brace myself for my own surgery.  I’d read up on both – lap band and bypass – to prepare myself for both of our journeys.  Instead, I shared my knowledge with my aunt and stepdad knowing that I won’t be taking this same path.  Granted, I keep telling myself that this surgery for her is more about reversing diabetes than it is weight loss, but I know she will lose the weight, too.

And then something else hit me: Once she loses the weight, I will be the only fat person left in our family.

Here’s the biggest difference between my mom and me when it comes to our food issues – she shovels no matter who’s watching; I usually do it in private. I’ve always felt like my obesity was a bit overshadowed by people watching how she ate.  They have probably been watching me, too, but I’ve tried not to be too “out there” about it all.

There was also something my aunt said today that really hit me hard. I know she didn’t mean anything by it, and I didn’t say a word in response (we had a distraction, thankfully).  She was talking about how my mom and I have always struggled with our weight, all our lives.  Then she said, “I can remember, even at the age of 3, she was fat!”

I kept quiet, because I love her, and – again – I know she didn’t mean anything negative.  But what I wanted to do was scream, “THAT IS EXACTLY THE MENTALITY THAT MADE HER FAT TO BEGIN WITH!!!”

My mom was nota fat kid.  She was a fucking MODEL.  I’m not using that word as a description of how cute/pretty she was – she actually was a model as a child!  When she got into her teens and started to fill out, her parents started dealing with her “weight problem.”  At the age of 14, she was probably a size 12/14 – but she was also 5’9″!  She’s been curvy all her life!  She’s got the pear shape that I did not inherit whatsoever.

When my parents were helping me deal with my perceived weight issues at a young age (my issues were more about high cholesterol than weight, but that’s another matter), she shared some of the pain she went through.  Her hope was to not put me through the same thing her parents put her through.  I will say that my parents always had the focus on health, even if weight was considered part of that package.  She told me a story about how, at one point, she was so stressed out by everyone wanting her to be thin thin thin and watching everything she ate…that she snuck a tuna sandwich into the bathroom to eat it.

Just as a reference point, I wore a size 11 when I was in about 7th grade…and I barely fit into my mom’s wedding dress (she had me try it on as a joke). Part of it was that I was pretty dang barrel chested.  Part of it was that she wasn’t fat back then.  She already saw herself that way, though. (I wish I had pics to show you of her before I was born, but I don’t have any handy.)

This was Mom right after I was born. Even after 9 months of pregnancy, I wouldn’t say she looked “fat” by any stretch.

 

I saw myself as fat by about age 10.  That was roughly the time we found out I had high cholesterol and triglycerides. Both of those words mean “fat,” so if you have high levels of both, that must make you fat, right?

I was 5’6″ with a C cup by 8th grade. I was a size 12/13.  I’ve since seen pictures. I remember how self-conscious I felt, how huge I thought I was.  I wasn’t.  I was tiny.  I was healthy.  I played volleyball and rode my bike all over town.  But I let everyone tell me I was fat until I just agreed with them.

8th grade – see how fat I was??

I’ve rambled. I tried writing this blog in my head on the way home from the hospital. I had an hour-long drive and I spent a good deal of it crying.  And trying to remind myself that I’m on the right track and I don’t need to bury my sorrows in some random fast food along the drive back.  I knew that wouldn’t help for more than 30 seconds…then I would feel worse.

I made it home with just water and some sugar-free gum to take my mind off things.  I dried my eyes and had a healthy dinner with my family.  My husband understands where I am and where I’ve been. He’s a wonderful man and I’m beyond lucky to have him in my life.

I wish I could go back in time to my 13 year old self and tell her to ignore everyone.  I wish I could do that at age 17, even.

Instead…I just have 32 year old me here and now…and she knows there’s no time like the present.