The One That Got Away

As I write this, I am at 187 pounds. I'm in my first semester of xray school, and have undergone many positive life changes since I last wrote in this blog. I'm really really happy. At peace. For the first time in a long time.  I actually hadn't thought to write again- I have basically quit running and put that chapter of my life behind me. Sometimes you don't know when you're going to have to write again though.

Yesterday was the inaugural Rock N Roll Savannah Marathon. Up until earlier this week, I'd still planned to do the race. I was going to walk it with a friend of mine from high school--training be damned, I was going to laugh in the face of training and collect me another half marathon medal. The plan was to go spend the night at my parents' house with the kids and visit with them, do the race, and come home later that night or the next day, depending on how I felt. I was also going to get to meet Ann Marie....who was traveling here all the way from Wisconsin to do the race. We'd had this planned for months...she is one of my dearest friends that I've met through running and blogging.

I just couldn't feel doing this race. My knee has been giving me absolute fits lately...the knee that I injured when I first started running. It still swells up and becomes immovable and very painful all the time. I am in my clinical rotations for school right now. Ten hour days lifting heavy patients and doing very physical work. I love it, every minute of it, but I started feeling scared that doing the race, especially untrained, might screw up my knee more and make me have to miss clinic. There were other, logistical reasons. I didn't want to have to get my kids out of school early, which I would've had to do in order to pick up my packet. I didn't want to have to fight crowds. I have a major research paper due in a week that I've yet to get started on, and really couldn't afford to stay in town an extra night. Blah blah blah.

So I decided not to do the race, but to go to Savannah anyway. I still wanted to see my family, and at least watch part of the race. Figured maybe I could still meet up with Becca and Ann Marie somehow...though I didn't really see how that could be possible, but maybe.  And I had a great time with my family. We watched and cheered runners for an hour or so. It was so exciting! My sister and I walked down to Forsythe Park after the race and just kind of experienced the atmosphere.

And I got sad. I wanted to be a part of that and I could have been. I had PAID to be...but I didn't follow through. I didn't get to meet Ann Marie, or see Becca, or meet John Bingham and have him sign my running books either. And all of that sucked. But it was watching the runners, who at my vantage point were at Mile 15, and seeing that slow, steady, plodding determination in their eyes that really prickled at me. I saw the way they were breathing and I remembered it. Everything came back to me, and I remembered why I ever loved to run in the first place. And I was sad.

All in all, I can't say that I necessarily made the right or wrong decision. I don't regret being able to walk, being well rested for clinic, and having an extra day to work on my paper. I don't regret the weight that I've lost and the peace that I have found with food since I have STOPPED running. I know I'm not ready to throw something else into the mix and disturb that right now. I don't regret not getting caught in standstill traffic, waiting two hours to get over the bridge to get my packet when it should have been 15 minutes max. And I certainly don't regret not torturing myself over the hot summer to train.  I have made my decision, and I am willing to accept the consequences for it, positive and negative.

That being said, I sure didn't expect to experience some of the feelings that I've had this weekend. I didn't expect to long for running so much, and to feel such a ....loss....about it.

I'm a busy person right now.  A busy, fufilled person who doesn't have time for much else. So this whole weekend may have inspired a blog post and nothing else. And that will be fine. I don't need to be a runner right now, and I really don't even want to be.

But maybe just one jog, this afternoon....

It feels good....

To be under 200 pounds. Finally! Actually, my last official weigh in put me at 194.6, so I have a good 5 lb safety barrier between me and 200. 
I wish I could be more inspirational, but here is the cold hard truth: I am not working out, I am not counting calories, I am eating whatever I want, and I am losing weight anyway. The key? I just don't eat as much as I used to. Period. It works.
All this time...all that hard work...I over complicated everything. It's just about not eating everything in sight and not getting so damn excited about food. And now the weight is finally dropping. And people are finally noticing.
I'm not going to do the half marathon in the fall, for a lot of reasons, but the main one being that I'm actually afraid training will screw up my weight loss. I mean...it didn't really do anything for me last year, as far as weight loss went. I lost two freaking pounds. I'm afraid that all that calorie burning will make my appetite surge again.
Call me a quitter, or whatever. I miss running, and as soon as the heat index drops to below 110 every day I'm going to run again.
But for now? I'm finally happy with myself. I feel like there is a huge monkey off my back because I've finally lost my fear of food. I feel 17 again in a way. I can drink a regular soda and not think about it. I can have cake and not eat the whole thing. It's just not an issue.
And I'm looking pretty damn good too...if I do say so myself.

Some Good News

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.

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?

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.

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.

Right after getting on the ship

My love and me

I still can't get over how beautiful the water was. Pictures just cannot do it justiice.

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At the beach

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.

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.