First of all, thank you Jennifer and Crystal for commenting on my last post. It meant a lot to me, and helped lift my spirits.
I'm slowly coming out of this latest funk. I know that depression is something that I will always have to deal with, and that's fine. But there are times when I can feel myself giving in...embracing the sick part of me because in some twisted way I am comforted by being able to label myself as Depressed. Those are the moments when things get scary....and when I find myself at a crossroads, knowing that the next small decision that I make could have a profound effect on the next few years of my life. I choose not to give in this go round, so we shall see what happens.
Anyway, this has been a pretty great week in my household. My husband got a much needed and well deserved promotion at work! I am so very proud of him. His new position is going to be a lot more challenging and hopefully very rewarding for him. The money is definitely going to help too especially as....I got my official acceptance into the Radiology program and will definitely be a student for the next two years! So things definitely seem to be falling into place for us...and I'm so happy about it.
So this last week I've made more of an effort to be alive. Less laying around, more participating in life. I've even gotten a little bit of exercise in, although no running yet. But we'll get there. I shall keep chugging along.
Growing in Spirit, Shrinking in Body!
Friday, July 1, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
I don't feel great lately. It's hard to sleep, or to be awake. I have no motivation to run at all. It's hot. I don't wanna. I'm thinking of dropping out of the half marathon in November. I have no motivation to eat right either. It's expensive. I don't wanna. I'm pretty comfortable just staying curled up in the fetal position until an undetermined date in the future.
I really don't know why I'm even giving this update right now. Gotta keep it real, I guess. Ha.
On the plus side, I have no appetite at all and so am continuing to lose weight. 203.2 this morning. So apparently being lifeless and depressed works just as well, if not better than working your ass off. Good to know.
Later...maybe. Oh who cares. Why should you if I don't, right?
I really don't know why I'm even giving this update right now. Gotta keep it real, I guess. Ha.
On the plus side, I have no appetite at all and so am continuing to lose weight. 203.2 this morning. So apparently being lifeless and depressed works just as well, if not better than working your ass off. Good to know.
Later...maybe. Oh who cares. Why should you if I don't, right?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Lessons Learned From The Other Side
I've wanted so badly to blog lately, but the longer I go without doing it, the harder it becomes to sit down and write. So this is my attempt to return to Blogville, and maybe I'll get through an entire post and hit publish before I give up and go do something else.
A lot of things have happened in the past few months, most of them internal. Because this isn't an anonymous blog, and there are things that I just don't want to get out to certain people in my real life on the off chance that they read this, what I can tell you is limited. But I can sum up by saying that I've been bothered by a lot of personal demons, and the end result of it all was that my weight got back up to 212 lbs. Now, before my cruise I weighed about 204, which was still up from my lowest weight of 201 in December. I really started struggling after Christmas. By the time I got back from the cruise, I weighed 208--not totally unexpected, but instead of working to take it off, I let it get worse and worse until I was back up to 212. You probably don't have to guess that I was devastated and felt very hopeless. A lot of hard work for nothing. I was talking about all of this with Heather one day (which was kind of a rare occasion because increasingly I would go to extensive lengths to NOT discuss anything that was going on with me), and she told me that I amazed her because I worked very hard to accomplish my goals and then I turned around and worked equally hard to undo all the hard work I put in! She said it was like I would spend hours shampooing my sofa to make it look fantastic, and then I would go outside and spend hours digging up dirt and dragging it inside and rubbing it all over my wet sofa. I realized that she was exactly right, and that cleared up a lot of my frustration. I would go on a really long run, burn tons of calories, and come home and drink a milkshake that I had "earned". Man, I really have "earned" myself a lot of food over the past few months! But the good news is, I'm back in the saddle now and I'm much wiser for my experiences. I'm now back down to 206 and going strong. I'm running regularly and even completed a 10k over Mother's Day Weekend. I've learned some valuable lessons and I'm putting them into practice. And I will now write them down in the hopes of maybe sparing somebody a lot of the heartache that I've had to go through.
Lesson #1: Eating in moderation can really be a crock of shit with the wrong outlook. Just because you aren't binging and pigging out on everything that you see does not mean that you can have anything that you want and still expect to lose weight. While "eating in moderation", I would often have at least one piece of cake a day (all the while being super proud of myself for limiting it to one piece or leaving one bite of it), one serving of cookies, or ice cream, or something fatty and delicious like a cheese wonton from the Chinese restaurant. I would have all of these things every day, just not a whole lot of them. And sometimes eating one thing in "moderation" WOULD lead to a binge. Which leads me to the second lesson that I have learned....
Lesson #2: Trigger foods are called trigger foods for a reason. STAY AWAY from them. This was the major thing about moderation that I could never grasp. Cake is my favorite food, and I tried over and over again to keep it in my diet and still lose weight. Won't work, not for me, not right now. Every delicious slice made me want to eat another one. If I somehow managed to avoid doing that, I was left hungry and wanting all day long, causing me to overeat other things trying to fill the void that cake left. But I refused to give it up, determined to find a way to eat it in peace and moderation. I don't know why I was so stubborn about it, or what I felt my life would be without it. But I felt like giving it up would be giving up control...and in fact I've learned that gaining control is about learning my limits. Right now, I can't have cake or any other type of baked goods. I don't buy them, and I won't be pressured by others into eating them. And ironically, now that these food items are off limits, I feel a sense of peace that I never had before. No more pressure, no more trying something out "just this once" to see if I can eat it like a skinny person would.
Lesson #3: "Just this once" really means "I don't feel like fighting right now and I'm giving up". I can't begin to elaborate on how close this one has come to destroying me forever. Allowing myself to eat something "for a treat" or not tracking my calories "just this once" always always ALWAYS leads to bad things for me. When I begin the justification cycle, I have a hard time breaking out of it. When I eat something that I know I shouldn't, it just makes it easier to eat the next thing that I shouldn't, and so on. The more I eat, the more weight I gain, the more helpless I feel, the more I eat. I've learned that the easiest place to break the cycle is right after I have the "just this once" thought. It's my new warning sign. It's my cue to stop and pay attention to what I'm doing. It just works better this way.
Lesson #4 It's just food. Realizing that my life is not going to be made any better by giving into cravings has been a huge step. It's all about taking the power out of food. Who cares? No matter how delicious something is, the experience is over in 15 minutes max (more like 3 minutes for me). Then I'm just left feeling empty and dirty! Better to just skip it and focus my thrills for something else. Cravings will dissipate, and funny enough, they go away quicker when I know that I won't give into them. Last but most importantly......
Lesson #5: I'm not a failure until I stop trying. When I was at my very worst, this thought came to me and wouldn't go away. I felt like all of my efforts had been for nothing. I thought that the entire past year went wrong....I tried so hard to make it go one way and it took a completely different direction. When I ran my half marathon, I was supposed to be able to have these amazing "after" photos that I could put up on this blog and share with the world. I was supposed to be a faster runner, I was supposed to be at my goal weight, I was supposed to have a large following of adoring fans telling me how great I am. None of that happened. I am still as slow as molasses, and I have lost a negligible amount of weight compared to what I should have lost. I stopped blogging because I got tired of having to say the same things over again....giving up and disappearing would just be much easier. And it was easy, and I was almost totally gone. But then what? If I end it, then I end it as a failure. If I give up, then everything really was for nothing. If I stop trying, then in a couple of years I will wish I was still only 212 pounds. Better to do just one thing right. Better to make just one good decision today and hope that it triggers another one. Better to claw my way up, even if I never get anywhere, because as long as I'm TRYING then I'm not FINISHED.
And I am here to tell you that I am NOT finished, not by a long shot.
A lot of things have happened in the past few months, most of them internal. Because this isn't an anonymous blog, and there are things that I just don't want to get out to certain people in my real life on the off chance that they read this, what I can tell you is limited. But I can sum up by saying that I've been bothered by a lot of personal demons, and the end result of it all was that my weight got back up to 212 lbs. Now, before my cruise I weighed about 204, which was still up from my lowest weight of 201 in December. I really started struggling after Christmas. By the time I got back from the cruise, I weighed 208--not totally unexpected, but instead of working to take it off, I let it get worse and worse until I was back up to 212. You probably don't have to guess that I was devastated and felt very hopeless. A lot of hard work for nothing. I was talking about all of this with Heather one day (which was kind of a rare occasion because increasingly I would go to extensive lengths to NOT discuss anything that was going on with me), and she told me that I amazed her because I worked very hard to accomplish my goals and then I turned around and worked equally hard to undo all the hard work I put in! She said it was like I would spend hours shampooing my sofa to make it look fantastic, and then I would go outside and spend hours digging up dirt and dragging it inside and rubbing it all over my wet sofa. I realized that she was exactly right, and that cleared up a lot of my frustration. I would go on a really long run, burn tons of calories, and come home and drink a milkshake that I had "earned". Man, I really have "earned" myself a lot of food over the past few months! But the good news is, I'm back in the saddle now and I'm much wiser for my experiences. I'm now back down to 206 and going strong. I'm running regularly and even completed a 10k over Mother's Day Weekend. I've learned some valuable lessons and I'm putting them into practice. And I will now write them down in the hopes of maybe sparing somebody a lot of the heartache that I've had to go through.
Lesson #1: Eating in moderation can really be a crock of shit with the wrong outlook. Just because you aren't binging and pigging out on everything that you see does not mean that you can have anything that you want and still expect to lose weight. While "eating in moderation", I would often have at least one piece of cake a day (all the while being super proud of myself for limiting it to one piece or leaving one bite of it), one serving of cookies, or ice cream, or something fatty and delicious like a cheese wonton from the Chinese restaurant. I would have all of these things every day, just not a whole lot of them. And sometimes eating one thing in "moderation" WOULD lead to a binge. Which leads me to the second lesson that I have learned....
Lesson #2: Trigger foods are called trigger foods for a reason. STAY AWAY from them. This was the major thing about moderation that I could never grasp. Cake is my favorite food, and I tried over and over again to keep it in my diet and still lose weight. Won't work, not for me, not right now. Every delicious slice made me want to eat another one. If I somehow managed to avoid doing that, I was left hungry and wanting all day long, causing me to overeat other things trying to fill the void that cake left. But I refused to give it up, determined to find a way to eat it in peace and moderation. I don't know why I was so stubborn about it, or what I felt my life would be without it. But I felt like giving it up would be giving up control...and in fact I've learned that gaining control is about learning my limits. Right now, I can't have cake or any other type of baked goods. I don't buy them, and I won't be pressured by others into eating them. And ironically, now that these food items are off limits, I feel a sense of peace that I never had before. No more pressure, no more trying something out "just this once" to see if I can eat it like a skinny person would.
Lesson #3: "Just this once" really means "I don't feel like fighting right now and I'm giving up". I can't begin to elaborate on how close this one has come to destroying me forever. Allowing myself to eat something "for a treat" or not tracking my calories "just this once" always always ALWAYS leads to bad things for me. When I begin the justification cycle, I have a hard time breaking out of it. When I eat something that I know I shouldn't, it just makes it easier to eat the next thing that I shouldn't, and so on. The more I eat, the more weight I gain, the more helpless I feel, the more I eat. I've learned that the easiest place to break the cycle is right after I have the "just this once" thought. It's my new warning sign. It's my cue to stop and pay attention to what I'm doing. It just works better this way.
Lesson #4 It's just food. Realizing that my life is not going to be made any better by giving into cravings has been a huge step. It's all about taking the power out of food. Who cares? No matter how delicious something is, the experience is over in 15 minutes max (more like 3 minutes for me). Then I'm just left feeling empty and dirty! Better to just skip it and focus my thrills for something else. Cravings will dissipate, and funny enough, they go away quicker when I know that I won't give into them. Last but most importantly......
Lesson #5: I'm not a failure until I stop trying. When I was at my very worst, this thought came to me and wouldn't go away. I felt like all of my efforts had been for nothing. I thought that the entire past year went wrong....I tried so hard to make it go one way and it took a completely different direction. When I ran my half marathon, I was supposed to be able to have these amazing "after" photos that I could put up on this blog and share with the world. I was supposed to be a faster runner, I was supposed to be at my goal weight, I was supposed to have a large following of adoring fans telling me how great I am. None of that happened. I am still as slow as molasses, and I have lost a negligible amount of weight compared to what I should have lost. I stopped blogging because I got tired of having to say the same things over again....giving up and disappearing would just be much easier. And it was easy, and I was almost totally gone. But then what? If I end it, then I end it as a failure. If I give up, then everything really was for nothing. If I stop trying, then in a couple of years I will wish I was still only 212 pounds. Better to do just one thing right. Better to make just one good decision today and hope that it triggers another one. Better to claw my way up, even if I never get anywhere, because as long as I'm TRYING then I'm not FINISHED.
And I am here to tell you that I am NOT finished, not by a long shot.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Cruisin'
Back from the Bahamas! I had SUCH a wonderful time on this cruise. The ship was beautiful, the food was delicious, the water was stunning gorgeous, and the alchohol was plentiful. What more can a girl ask for?
Here are a few random shots from the trip.
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| Right after getting on the ship |
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| My love and me |
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| I still can't get over how beautiful the water was. Pictures just cannot do it justiice. |
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| Add caption |
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| At the beach |
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| I LOVED this sign! |
I gained 4 pounds on this trip...I don't know how much was from food and how much was from fruity tropical drinks. Oh well.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
No Time
Where is time going? Why is there never any available to me? There are so many things that I want to do. I want to keep up with this blog better, for one. Spend more time with my: husband, children, friends, parents, sister, you name it and I probably would like to have more time with them. I would like to be able to actually blow dry my hair and throw on some makeup before rushing out the door...that hasn't happened in a while.
I would like to, no I NEED, to have more downtime just for me. I'm not a social person at heart. Although I love my friends and family, I need time to just flat out be alone and read, write, do rithmatic, I don't know just decompress and regroup. I need that, haven't gotten it lately, but need it. And the worse part is that at the end of the day, I feel like I got NOTHING accomplished. So where did my damn day go, huh? What was I even doing when I was having to say no to all the things that I really wanted to do?
I'm seriously on the verge of losing it here...it's gotten to where I want to cry myself to sleep at night because I feel like I'm losing my identity. Luckily for me, this coming week is my last week of school for the quarter, after which I leave for my Bahamas cruise. It will be sorely appreciated and I think of nothing more lately than spending four tropical days in a fuity alcohol-induced daze. I will not even look at my cell phone after I get on the boat!!
Exercise and diet? I'm trying. I am getting my exercise in, for sure. I think its the only thing that keeps me sane. I'm doing fairly good on my diet, but I have been around some major food pushers lately and I need to learn how to resist pushy food pushers better. My weight keeps fluctuating from 208 to 203...I'm getting pretty frustrated and discouraged, and while I know that I need to do better--- I'm not deluding myself when I tell you that I try every day to feed myself the best diet possible. The inches are disappearing, though. I'm going to try to drink more water and eat less salt...two of my eternal crosses that I bear. Love salt. LOVE salt.
Anyway, going for a run this afternoon in between paper writing and test studying. Did Level 3 of the Shred for the first time yesterday...all I can say is wow.
I would like to, no I NEED, to have more downtime just for me. I'm not a social person at heart. Although I love my friends and family, I need time to just flat out be alone and read, write, do rithmatic, I don't know just decompress and regroup. I need that, haven't gotten it lately, but need it. And the worse part is that at the end of the day, I feel like I got NOTHING accomplished. So where did my damn day go, huh? What was I even doing when I was having to say no to all the things that I really wanted to do?
I'm seriously on the verge of losing it here...it's gotten to where I want to cry myself to sleep at night because I feel like I'm losing my identity. Luckily for me, this coming week is my last week of school for the quarter, after which I leave for my Bahamas cruise. It will be sorely appreciated and I think of nothing more lately than spending four tropical days in a fuity alcohol-induced daze. I will not even look at my cell phone after I get on the boat!!
Exercise and diet? I'm trying. I am getting my exercise in, for sure. I think its the only thing that keeps me sane. I'm doing fairly good on my diet, but I have been around some major food pushers lately and I need to learn how to resist pushy food pushers better. My weight keeps fluctuating from 208 to 203...I'm getting pretty frustrated and discouraged, and while I know that I need to do better--- I'm not deluding myself when I tell you that I try every day to feed myself the best diet possible. The inches are disappearing, though. I'm going to try to drink more water and eat less salt...two of my eternal crosses that I bear. Love salt. LOVE salt.
Anyway, going for a run this afternoon in between paper writing and test studying. Did Level 3 of the Shred for the first time yesterday...all I can say is wow.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The "I Just Felt Like Running" Virtual 5k Race Report
This was a fun race for me. Heather graciously accepted my offer to run this with me, and what is better than starting your day off with your best friend AND a nice run?? Well, I just can't think of anything so how bout dat! Anyway, I haven't run in a few weeks but I was determined to be a warrior and power through. Here is a picture of us before the race being very fierce and athletic:
Thank you, Jeff, for putting on this race and getting me back outside! This has totally whet my appetite for more running. I can't wait to get out there and start training for my upcoming 10k.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Quick Update
Sorry for all the test posts. New phone, and I'm trying to figure out how to do everything from it!
Everything is CRAZY. Between my school, kids' schools, getting everything ready to start clinic next quarter, husband's work schedule going all wonky, and about fifty million other things, I have NOT had much time to blog. HOWEVER, just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean that I haven't been working. I didn't post a weigh in last week because I had an exact maintain on the scale--steady at 206.6. I wasn't overly crushed, though, because I'd lost about 4 inches from my waist, arms, and thighs. (Doing that wretched 30 Day Shred, you know). This week, I haven't measured yet (because I lost the sheet of paper with my old measurements) but I'm down 2 pounds to 204.6. So I'll take it. I'm starting to feel smaller again, and I've progressed to doing Level 2 on the Shred without too much modification. Jillian Michaels is an unforgiving spawn of Satan.
Food is less of an issue right now, mostly because I haven't had time to obsess about it. Making healthy choices is easy right now...maybe its just because my trip is getting closer. 19 days!
Also, I'm signed up for two races coming up shortly. The first one is Detroit Runner's "I Just Felt Like Running Virtual 5k." coming up this Saturday. I haven't been doing much running lately, so this will probably be ugly. The other race is the Crimestoppers' Azalea Run in Savannah on Mothers Day Weekend. That one is a10k. The coolest thing about that race is that my mom is going to be working it, and I'm going to bring the kids down and spend the whole weekend with my parents. I don't get to do that often enough, and I'm really looking forward to some quality family time. My mom even paid my registration fee, that made me feel really special. So, I'm going to be following the Hal Higdon 10k training plan...probably the beginner one because, honestly, I've not been a runner lately. I'm so excited about getting back out there though! I've been dying to run lately, and I've let some external issues scare me out of doing it. Seriously, you wouldn't even believe me if I told you...Suffice it to say that I've been sticking to exercises that I can do indoors. Anyway, I've missed blogging and I've missed everyone in Bloggity Land. I'm going to make this more of a priority. I do better when I blog often. I wrote this entire post from my new phone using this thing called Swype, so any weird typos or misplaced words are because of that. I'm trying to learn. Layer, taters.
Food is less of an issue right now, mostly because I haven't had time to obsess about it. Making healthy choices is easy right now...maybe its just because my trip is getting closer. 19 days!
Also, I'm signed up for two races coming up shortly. The first one is Detroit Runner's "I Just Felt Like Running Virtual 5k." coming up this Saturday. I haven't been doing much running lately, so this will probably be ugly. The other race is the Crimestoppers' Azalea Run in Savannah on Mothers Day Weekend. That one is a10k. The coolest thing about that race is that my mom is going to be working it, and I'm going to bring the kids down and spend the whole weekend with my parents. I don't get to do that often enough, and I'm really looking forward to some quality family time. My mom even paid my registration fee, that made me feel really special. So, I'm going to be following the Hal Higdon 10k training plan...probably the beginner one because, honestly, I've not been a runner lately. I'm so excited about getting back out there though! I've been dying to run lately, and I've let some external issues scare me out of doing it. Seriously, you wouldn't even believe me if I told you...Suffice it to say that I've been sticking to exercises that I can do indoors. Anyway, I've missed blogging and I've missed everyone in Bloggity Land. I'm going to make this more of a priority. I do better when I blog often. I wrote this entire post from my new phone using this thing called Swype, so any weird typos or misplaced words are because of that. I'm trying to learn. Layer, taters.
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