Words

Words are more than just words

 

It is amazing to me sometimes what words can do to a person.  I say to my patients that words often hurt more than any amount of physical violence against a person.  So then why do we tend to say things that are so negative to ourselves all the time?  I am harder on myself than anyone else and yet I still do things that I am not happy with and then this starts the negative thoughts.  I have never thought that I was good enough or that I deserved love.  I still struggle with this, even though I know in my heart that I am loved.

 

So as I continue to struggle with my weight loss journey, I need to find a way to realize that I am loved and I am worthy of my success. I have been slacking with everything, tracking, eating, exercise, you name it and I haven’t done it. I get stuck in this rut and forget who I am within this journey.  I am more than a mom and wife, I am worth continuing on this journey. I deserve to love myself and stop defining myself as the number that comes up on the scale every week.

 

The question now is, how? How do I prove to myself that I am worth it and that I deserve it?  I need to set small goals that are attainable rather than so far off that I fear them.  So here are my goals for the next 4 weeks:

 

• attend meetings, and by that I mean don’t just go and weigh in actually stay for the meetings.
• track, track, track
• find time for me and by that I mean find the time to exercise and stop making excuses
• lost weight every week, I don’t care how much as long as the scale goes down

 

Now, some of you may ask why only the next 4 weeks, because I think part of my problem is that I focus on the big picture instead of looking at this as a journey where each step of the way is a new piece of the puzzle and in the end I will be able to see the beautiful picture.  That picture will be me a new and improved me.  So, in the end I will learn to love me and all my faults and be able to accept defeat when needed and be able to recognize that even though I am not perfect I still deserve to be loved.

I am Human and I Struggle

My journey is very similar to a lot of other woman.  I have struggled with my weight since I was about 18.  Prior to that, I was thin. I was a cheerleader from the time I was 4 yo, until I graduated high school, active in sports (basketball & softball) and I still remember one time a coach saying to me that my tan made me look thinner and I thought he was saying I was fat.  My senior year of high school was awful, I was bullied and I kept having what everyone assumed were asthma attacks, this continued into my first semester of college and I was given oral steroids to take.  I gained almost 80lbs in about 3 months.  Little did I know, that I was really having panic attacks (I still have them now occasionally).

 

I struggled from that moment on on with my weight and tried every diet known to man.  I have been on “weight watchers” more times than I can count, tried “LA Weight Loss” and medical weight loss alternatives.  I have even contemplated having weight loss surgery, but to no avail I am back and working my way through “weight watchers”.  In December of 2008, I started again, my daughters were 2 then.  I was doing great, by January 20th I had lost 17lbs and felt amazing and then on January 24, 2009 my world was turned upside down.  My brother died that morning, of what was later determined to be congestive heart failure, he was 35 yo.  I was determined to not allow this tragedy to affect me, and by 7/09 I had lost 46.2lbs, my greatest lose while on the program.  

 

It was then that I sunk into a deep depression and the loss of my brother really began to sink in.  I stopped going to meetings and fluctuated for months, by 10/09 I was up 5lbs (not bad) but my motivation was done and with 40 WI completed I stopped going.  I ate to heal the pain of my loss and didn’t know what to do.  I had a husband and beautiful twin girls but I had a hole in my heart and was missing a sense of myself.  The next 2 years were filled with what seemed like a never ending struggle and I kept eating to keep myself from feeling anything.  

 

On 10/21/2011 I went to go and see a doctor who basically told me that I was going to slowly kill myself if I kept going on the path I was going.  I weight 220.8 lbs, .2 heavier than I was when I started in 2009.  I realized that I needed to be healthy for my children and as I was turning 34 I felt it was even more important as I was only one year away from the age when my brother died.  On 10/22/11, I made a commitment to myself and my family that I was going to regain my health and begin to focus on me.  As of 5/27/12 I had lost 25lbs, it is happening much slower this time as I continue to struggle with my emotions and the eating that follows.  I gained +.8 this past week so I am at 24.2 lost, at 7 months in the last time I had lost 2x as much weight.  

 

In less than 6 months I will turn 35 though, and I am scared of this.  I would love to hide for the entire year to make sure that nothing happens, but I know that I can not.  My brother died 2 weeks before his 36 birthday, so if I can get past the next year and half of my life, I feel like it will be ok.  Now I know that rationally it won’t matter, but in my mind if I can get healthy and loss 25 more pounds by November then I think I will be in a better physical place.  I know though that focusing on the big goal is not always a good idea, so right now I am looking at the next 5lbs.

 

The point of all this is to let you all know I am human and I struggle every day with this journey.  There are good days and bad days and in the end my choices are my own.  I hope that by sharing my journey with others, people will know that it is ok to not be perfect every day.  Weight loss is about finding yourself and what makes you happy, in the it isn’t about the number that shows up on the it is about how we change ourselves in the process.

Gained

Well I gained +0.8lbs this week. I knew that potentially I was in for a gain even with 21K steps on Friday.  I can’t make up for a crappy week with one good day and even that wasn’t a good day, it was just an insane one.  

This past week has been spent trying to help my MIL/FIL find a place to live here in Jersey as they are getting ready to move here.  They are selling their home in the South and relocating to be closer to J and the girls.  At first I thought this was a great idea and I even was the one to suggest it, well it is now going to be them living with us for 6 weeks as their new place will not be available until 8/15.  What have I gotten myself into???!!!

Yesterday, I spend the day with my MIL in Philly at the Wills Eye Emergency as she had a tear in her retna that needed to be repaired.  They were luckily able to repair it, however we were there for almost 6 hours.  I was exhausted and ended up eating a bag of pretzels and skittles to stay awake and make it through.  Again, bad choices due to stress I just wanted something that was going to help me get through those hours.  My FIL was with me and he at times gets very worried especially about his wife.  So I did a lot of sitting with him, trying to reassure him.  Now as far as my good deeds go, that was a big one.  J was home with the girls and it wasn’t that bad, but as we all know sitting in an ER is never fun.

So I am moving on today, I am going to set up a plan for the week and I am going to do my best to stick to it.  I have a planner which I write all the important appointments for my girls in, so I think I am going to write down my exercise plan for the week in there too.  The idea that if I write it down then I have to do it, I am stuck with it!!  I am looking forward to losing those next 5 lbs and staying on a path that will keep me strong.

Busy

So today is WI day, as is every Saturday.  I have not made the healthiest of choices this week.  I did try to walk a good part of the days this week, but even still I am sure that it was not enough.  There is a part of me that is angry with myself for allowing this to happen, but then there is a part of me that is saying ok, you know what you did move on.

The problem is the part that is angry causes these emotions to go haywire and then I feel guilt and then want to eat and then I feel guilt for eating and well you get the picture it is a big revolving door!!!  So I have to find a way to move on as I said and not dwell on the mistakes and accept that no matter what the scale says today I will be ok with it and move forward from it!!

As part of this amazing website friendsweighingin.com I am doing a photo a day for June.  June 1st was “your view”, here is the picture from y yesterday.  My daughters wanted to go on a walk before school, they really do inspire me.