Permanently

Live to Fight Another Day

I have been thinking this past weekend about how I sabotage myself in my weight loss efforts. I do pretty good with the eating and exercising and then I have a day like Saturday. I start the day off with a yogurt, coffee and water. I take TWO bottles of water to the gym for my hour long walk/run and some things occur and I am off track.

First, because my legs are sore I set the time for 45 minutes instead of my usual 60. I run two miles and walk one and do a 5 minute cool down. My rationale is 2 to 1 run/walk ratio and I need to go to the grocery store and then take Rachel (my daughter) to work. Then I go to the grocery store - I am starving but I have my list and I do really well sticking to my list until I see the Easter candy on clearance....so I throw some in the cart. Why? I think I thought why not? It's FAT FREE candy, I'll have some as a reward...this is why I shouldn't go near a grocery store when I am starving!

So I am driving home and starving (am I really starving at 230 pounds?) and I reach in the bag, not for a yogurt or a cheese stick or even a whole wheat tortilla - no I grab the bag of candy and think just a few until I get home. Slippery slope....

I get home and I bring in all the groceries and put them away and I sit down in front of my computer with a water and you guess it...CANDY! I engage in mindless nibbling.....binging?...and the next thing I know, I have eaten half the bag!!!! That's 700 calories of PURE SUGAR!!!!

So I think about this and I post this to my Spark nutrition page and figure hey, I still have 1390 calories left in the day...I will be okay. Within the next hour I finish the bag of candy and another 700 calories are consumed. My mind immediately rationalizes this by thinking I will just do some cardio with the Wii boxing and besides, I still have 690 calories left for dinner (I still haven't had lunch or any real food since the morning).

I take a show and I feel so tired and I think it's because of the Benedryl I took earlier so I lay down for about 30 minutes and I fall into a DEEP sleep (a sugar coma) and Rachel wakes me up so I can take her to work and I feel hungover. I slowly drag myself downstairs and get into the car and take her to work and I realize, I am still starving and haven't eaten lunch. It's almost 4pm by this time and I have to take a movie back to the Redbox and I decide I will take it to the one in front of McDonald's because I can pull in right in front and leave Brian (my grandson) in his car seat while I return it. A good plan for efficiency right? Not good for someone who is starving - because as I pull out from returning the movie I find myself entering the drive through. I decide I will just get a small cheese burger and a happy meal for Brian with Chicken nuggets and apple dippers and milk. No fries, no soda just a cheeseburger...but I am starving and am too irritable at this stage to go home and cook so I rationalize my next choice by telling myself it will be lunch AND dinner. So I order the Quarter Pounder with cheese meal with DIET lemonade...I am trying right???

I eat my meal driving home so fast that before I hit the gate, I only have the lemonade left. We get home, I finish feeding Brian, he only eats two nuggets and some apple slices and he's off to play...see I am not learning to do what Brian instinctively does, eats until he is full. For a second, I think I am bigger than him...until I start to feel like CRAP! Now remember, I haven't eaten red meat for a long time and suddenly I am feeling my stomach turn and feel ill. And then it hits me, GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT! and you can guess where I am next.

I feel terrible the rest of the evening, I am irritable, impatient, exhausted and drained. I am counting every minute until I can go to bed. Poor Brian wants to run and play and I am like a dead lump of crap just slogging along and laying around letting him climb on me and I can tell he is getting irritated with me! He has every right - I failed big time on Saturday! Finally it's 9pm and he is ready for bed and so am I! We get ready for bed I hold him and sing to him and then put in down, he rolls over into his comfy position and within minutes is asleep.

Instead of going to bed myself, I go downstairs to watch a movie and wait for Rachel to get home. Around midnight she does and we chat for about a half hour and finally go to bed. I fall asleep instantly because the next thing I know, it's 8:06 am on Sunday and Brian is playing right outside my bedroom door and I realize I have lived to fight another day!

So I have learned a few valuable lessons; first, sugar is NOT my friend! Second, if I eat like my grandson does then maybe this would be a much easier process. And third, I need to find out why I feel "hungry" all the time.

So I eat my breakfast, drink some water and then go to the gym and set the time for 60 minutes and I run 2.5 miles and walk 2 miles and I realize that the hour is my friend and a full 10 minute cool down is my lifesaver! I come home, eat a protein bar, shower, do some laundry and wake up Brian from his nap. We play, eat some lunch and play some more (it's been storming outside since Saturday night) and we just enjoy each other and I don't think about food on Sunday the way I obsessed about it on Saturday. We eat a moderate dinner and I have stayed well below my daily calorie limits. We both go to bed at 9pm last night and I wake up this morning refreshed and ready.

It really is a daily process, sometimes meal by meal. The best thing for me is that I didn't let Saturday turn into a weekend bender or worse, discourage me and get me off track for longer. I will go to the gym in an hour and I will work my walk/run program like I haven't skipped a beat. I have a pretty important goal - I want to run! Oh yeah I almost forgot, yesterday as I was leaving the gym, I saw an advertisement about a 5k Run for the American Red Cross and I grabbed a brchure and have decided I will do it. It's on May 9th and I have 2.5 weeks to get myself up for it. I am not racing for time, I am racing for my own personal best - to complete it.

I have lived to fight for this day.

I Get It.

Interesting that this was on my welcome screen this morning after posting last night. I get this! I really do - it's exactly how I have been feeling about this whole experience. That I was just going to fail anyway. The disaster. I realize that for many of the last ten years, I convinced myself that it was okay to be overweight, my calling wasn't about my looks and therefore, it didn't matter. I had bought into the media hype about weight and looks. How superficial is that. Then I think I began to accept my failure and decided I would try to live with it - except the failure was getting larger, literally.

I remember a few years ago shortly after my dad passed away and I went on a cruise to Mexico with some friends. I weighed 197 at the end of that cruise and was surprised that I had lost weight during it. Below is a picture of me during that cruise. I hadn't been below 200 for almost 7 years before and haven't been that since.

Now I thought hey, I look pretty okay and this might be the best it's going to be for me. I can live with that. Well, 4 years and 45lbs later - I cannot live with it. Stress really does have a lot to do with your physical well-being and I certainly was stressed during this time - I had lost my dad, my kids were in that wonderful stage of life called TEENS and I went back to work without anytime to grieve. I don't recommend it. That smile you see, was probably the only smile I had for the next few months, maybe the whole next year. I was sad and tired and I wanted to be anywhere but where my life was. Now I am sure that my attitude contributed to the weight gain and I am certain that I had no motivation back then.

But now I do - I care and I am motivated and for the first time in a very long time I am positive that I can do this. Not because I am faking it til I make it - because I finally want it bad enough. Sure getting below 200 would be a wonderful success - but it's not enough - I need to be fit and healthy and I want to live an active life with my husband and children and grandson. I do not really know what that magic number will be but I am convinced that when I feel good about myself and when I have the energy to spend the entire day with my family actively and when I no longer have that weighty feeling I have been carrying around I will know.

This morning I ran a whole mile without stopping. It felt so wonderful to do it. I have been doing a 90 minute walk/jog thing where I alternate walking a certain distance and jogging the same distance. I have been averaging a 15:30 mile and doing so for about 3 weeks. I also have been hiking and doing some track work with Brian on my back or in the jogging stroller. My goal has been to increase my endurance and work on my breathing. My endurance has actually been increasing steadily and I have had little issue with going further.

My breathing is another matter. Ever since we moved here to Kentucky, I have been experiencing the hellish side effects of full-blown allergies. I used to think it was an overstated issue but now that I have experienced the stopped up nose, watery and itchy eyes and the hives I apologize to any and all who I might have made light of their problem before. It is terrible to live this way. The glorious part of it all is the medication; makes you sluggish and sleepy. But it's not an excuse. I have to figure it out and I have been working on timing my workouts and my medication so that I can exercise through the sleepiness and breath through the exercise.

Except for some hot days, it's working out okay. Today it's rainy and cold so I felt okay, until that adrenaline kicked in from jogging and my nose started running just as fast. Have you ever had to blow your nose while jogging? It's not easy. So I find that I breath in and out of my mouth. Which is not necessarily bad, but if I don't control it, I start to hyperventilate and that's where I get into some trouble. It's all a process.

Hanging in there.

Talking about sleeping...

Well, I guess as long as you don't give up, you're still in the fight right? My life has changed so dramatically since that last post. I have had a hysterectomy, found out we were NOT retiring to North Carolina but instead hubby got promoted and we are moving to Hawaii in June, my daughter and my grandson moved back home, and I find myself a stay-at-home-mom/gram. I have closed up my sewing room to make room for my grandson (no biggie) and adjusted my schedule to accommodate a working daughter and a toddler has been interesting to say the least. Now don't get me wrong, I asked for this and I am so happy they are here.

But once again, I have put me last and as for my weight, it has been a roller coaster to say the least. I started 2009 at 242 lbs. Yes, I GAINED more after that last post - I could blame it on the holidays, the winter months or any number of things; but I won't. The truth of the matter is, I eat when I am stressed and I have been STRESSED OUT! I eat to celebrate and I have had some wonderful things to celebrate. I eat because I love food and it is a self-indulgence on my part. I only have myself to blame.

In March, I decided to get honest about what I have done to my body and take FULL responsibility for my current condition. Not my allergies, ten years of hormonal issues, hell, the babies are almost 20 & 21 now - I quit smoking 9 years and 10 months ago! No, I just eat too much - PERIOD. I eat a good variety of healthy things, but I still eat too much of it. I give in to my cravings like a child and that sort of makes me mad when I think about it. I am not a child, I am a grown woman who has taken care of everyone except myself.

For those of you who know me, know that I have wrestled with a lot of things and all of the time I have ended up in a better place than when I started. I have to say I have rarely experienced anything but ultimate success.

This weight issue is different - I have battled this ever increasing bulge miserably - with no success - I have averaged a yearly overall weight gain of 10lbs since 1999 when I quit smoking. Which means 100 pounds! Not good!

So I went back to SparkPeople and I have been trying a new approach - I just record all the activity I do and the food that I eat and I weight myself once a week (which is really difficult as I have an obsession about this weight). Yesterday I weighed in at 231 lbs. I had given up beef, pork and soda last year and I am working on moderation. I began March walking, increasing my distance and before I left for Florida I had just begun a walk/jog routine. I was averaging 5 miles a day and I was using the old golf course to add some resistance to my workout. I started with a 17 minute mile pace and have whittled it to a 15 minute mile pace. Yes, that is quite a feat given how much I weigh and the short amount of time I have been on this latest wagon.

But I want to run again - like I used to when I was younger. I want to feel strong and be able to rely on my body for the long haul. I have abused it with this obesity and it is not happy with me. I am currently in a catch-22 - I'm fat and obese so it's difficult for me to run because of the extra weight I have to carry (the only plus being I burn more calories than my hubby doing the same distance) and I need to up my cardio so I can burn the fat. I envision a fair amount of discomfort and possible pain.

A few weeks ago I checked out a couple of books on running and training to run distances and I have decided that I will find and compete in a half-marathon by the end of this year. I decided that I needed to take the focus off my weight and put it on running because I would naturally have to lose weight to attain the running goal. I think I have thought SO MUCH about my weight for SO LONG that I need to approach from a different perspective.

Another thing I recently realized was I had never actually confronted the weight issue because I never really thought much about how I looked. For years I have added on this weight and never really saw myself as fat - not until this past summer when I was around 30+ skinny people; most of whom were telling me how they need to lose weight (BARF); if only. A side note - I HATE when people of normal weight call themselves fat; it makes me want to check them into a hospital. Anyhow, I realized how much more I weighed and more importantly, how I looked relative to everyone else. Now some of you may find this strange given I live in a house of normal weighing people - but I honestly didn't see myself as THAT big and when I saw an obese person I would ask if I looked as big and the answer was no. Besides, I am an active person, teaching water aerobics and swimming lessons and I even competed in a swim meet and placed 1st a couple of heats. So even though I knew I was overweight, I thought I was at least healthy. Talk about delusional. Besides, when I hit the 22/24 size for shirts - I could no longer say it was because of my breasts - I am 5'7" tall and that's just too damn BIG! I need to lose weight NOW and I need to be serious about it. Running is my goal and losing weight is one of the keys to achieving it.

One last thing I discovered about myself is that I have been reluctant to talk about my weight with my friends and family and I don't usually post pictures of myself or have them taken for that matter. I have conveniently stayed out of the way. Now I started this blog with the full intention of disclosing my experiences to any and all who cared to read and it's not like I care who reads it - but oh that self-esteem crap gets in the way and I was literally hiding out. Besides, if I actually talked about this then I might actually have to commit to changing it. I haven't been committed. There, I said it. Now I am.

I am posting this blog along with my Sparkpeople to Facebook where my friends and family will see it and they can choose whether or not they read it. It's my way of staying honest about it all. If you want to encourage me, great. If you have any fresh ideas on how I can do anything better, great. I could really use tips on running and breath control. If what you read here helps you, then that's just an added bonus. I am doing this so I am no longer sleepwalking through my life. I hope that if you are struggling like me you realize that I still have hope and that you are not alone. It's a day at a time, sometimes a meal at a time. I hope for your journey as I hope in mine.