I'm learning...

I intended to write more regularly -ooopsies!

I had my monthly appointment at the weight management  program yesterday.  I am down a total of 13 pounds since starting the program.  My blood pressure was SUPER! Thanks to that walking I'm doing, I've got it a little more under control - not that it was a problem, but there is family history there.

I have 10 pounds to lose now so that my BMI goes under 50.  That means that I can do the lap-band procedure as an outpatient.  I. must.lose.the.ten.   Granted I have like 3 months, but I also have a 30 year class reunion in August. I am doing a 5K walk in early May. I'm also doing a Dirty Girl event near Milwaukee in the middle of August - unless I manage to score a surgery date by then in which case I won't be getting dirty with my girl-peeps. 

Things I learned at yesterday's class:

1. We truly are all different as we pursue this thing called health.  I was in class with two other people and we were all three very very different in our approaches and in our paths.  I have to say I feel really really smart about this process and how I'm going to get to the big day as healthfully as possible.

2. When I want to, I have amazing determination.  Strangely, this is one of the first times I have put the focus on my self and worked hard to achieve something primarily for ME.  I continue to learn that I am worthy of good health, wellness, and looking like the woman I am on the inside. Cuz inner-skinny-bitch ROCKS!

We know that's NOT what I meant.

Annnd, that's not it either. You get the point.

3. Grazing vs 3 squares - I have been grazing throughout the day to get my protein in.  I'm not eating as many veggies and fruits as I should but I've got this protein thing down.  So last night I bought the baby carrrots in the bag and dragged them to work with me.  I've eaten some.  They give me hiccups.  But I ate 'em anyway. Maybe I'm sucking air. But I'm getting in the stupid vegetables.

4. I'm prone to celebratory food fun.  We had spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic cheese bread for supper last night.  OMG - it was delish.  I've eaten a bit of pasta, but this was pasta-palooza.  Naturally this morning I had to have a chocolate bismark with chocolate cream filling chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles.  The Kwik Trip knew I was on my way.  I chased it with a chocolate milk.  That's the end of the food fest.  Now I have to get serious again.

5. Cleaning out the fridge is empowering.  I don't have enough room to see all my veggies on the shelves because of all the crap and leftover containers and rotting stuff I forgot about and jars of pickles we inherited from my mom when she died.  Who the hell needs 6 jars of pickles in their fridge?  I made my son drain and dump them all out.  I don't much like pickles.  I felt bad dumping them. But now I can see what's all in that fridge and maybe won't let stuff rot and leak all over.


Things are going along well. I feel good.  The only "issue" is that I think "that time of the month" is freekin' early. I.HATE.IT.A.LOT!!! 

Hopefully it will pass quickly so I can get on with the rest of my life.

TTFN!



This work is hard!!!

Stalking lots of blogs lately, I notice the hot topic seems to be the notion that some folks see bariatric surgery as "the easy way out."  Maybe I thought that as well, but then I met my boyfriend who has lost 180 lbs. thru gastric bypass surgery and has to run every day to keep the evil  pounds at bay. I think of another friend who has lost a ton of weight but is still miserable as a person.  It ain't easy.

If you've ready any of this blog, you know I am preparing for lapband surgery.  I am about 3 months into my 6 month preparation program.  At 322 lbs my BMI  was over 50. In order to have the surgery as an outpatient, i need to lose weight to get that BMI below 50.  

IT IS HARD!!!

The mental part is just as challenging as the physical.   I have been fighting demons for years and managed to swaddle them in my fat self.  Unraveling the reasons I've gotten to this weight his hard and painful.  This shit ain't for sissies.

And before January 1 I had become a complete couch potato.  Since then I have been working toward getting fit.  I am walking. For a while I did one walk a day. Then I decided to try two walks.  Now I'm up to three walks a day.  I started doing 15 minutes in the morning; now I'm doing 30 minutes.  Around lunch time I take a 15-20 minute walk, making myself climb the stairs in my office building from the basement to the 4th floor. Hauling this carcass up that many stairs is an ass-kicker. Today I wanted to skip it because I've been congested and am having trouble breathing, but I did it anyway.  This evening I will walk my three dogs...in two rounds of walking.

This morning -  I jogged.  I've read a little about the Couch to 5K program, so I decided to add some bursts of jogging in with my walking.  I hurt now a little, but by golly it didn't kill me.  I think I will try a little of that again tonight.  The dogs will love it.

My personally prescribed eating program seems to be working.  I feel good and can tell when I've fouled up.  It isn't worth it to feel so gross, so I know I have to be much much more careful what I put in my mouth.

I've been drinking hot tea the last couple days to fight the congestion in my chest.  It sure helps.

I'm really enjoying this journey, even though it is hard.  I like me a lot these days and feel like a success for the first time in ages. That's a good thing.  I don't feel like I need to hide anymore, either.  Hide from what?  IDK - but I have the sense that I've been hiding from the world. 

OOOOP! Gotta go. I can smell the coffee pot burning out the bottom.  Thanks for reading!

Hangover - kill me now.1

I had a beautiful weekend with my man and my son.  Easter was with them plus my brother plus my bestie and her hubby.  What a great day.

The bad news is that I was off the hook with my eating.  I was a frickin' eating machine and didn't give a rip that I was falling right into my old stuff myself at holiday time pattern.

I felt like total crap all day long.

I'm exhausted now.

Lesson learned.

MUST.STAY .FOCUSED.

My five things Friday...

1. I can be an inspiration. Out of the blue this morning a co-worker facebooked me wanting to go for a walk around my little town.  My house is a mess always and she lives in what is to me a palatial estate.  So I warned her about my "white-trash-third-ward" abode and over she came.  We had a great walk and talk. She told me that my commitment to walking on a regular basis has given her motivation to get her own self moving.  Whodathunkit?

2. I am in a perfect place today where I don't care if I eat or not.  Life is good.  I don't feel the need to graze.  And what I have eaten has been high in protein. Plus an apple.  It's not that hard today.

3. As I'm cleaning out my body and brain from depression and being sedentary, I am inclined to also clean my house and get rid of the crap that just sits here gathering dust.  Depression is a terrible thing.  I'm not saying I'm a hoarder exactly, cuz I can navigate the house easily. I do have random piles of stuff that need to go somewhere or in the garbage.

4. I love this weather. It's almost 50* in Wisconsin today.  I have sheets on the line.  I love sleeping in line-dryed sheets after a busy day.  I'm having a sleepover which makes it even better.

5. As I emerge from my old life, I realize how truly blessed I am today.    I'm glad I returned to blogging because I enjoy writing; it's so healing for me.


God bless y'all.

Making myself do things I'd rather not do. It's a good thing.

My inner spoiled brat tends to want to run the show some days.  It's her I have to conquer in order to win this war on myself.  While I was walking recently, I found myself actually thinking about me as two entities - kinda weird, but it makes sense to me.  I've apparently always given in to that spoiled brat which is part of why I ended up over 300 lbs.  It's just easier sometimes....well, most of the time.

No one said that losing weight was going to be easy - it's hard as hell!  And even though some folks think of WLS as the "easy way out" to lose weight, I'm here to say that it isn't true.  And I'm pre-surgery.  I have a ton of work to do before I am finally approved for the lapband.  When I started this my BMI was over 52. Yikes!   I have to get it down to below 50 before I can have out-patient surgery.  That means losing like 30 pounds before I can even get on the table.  And it isn't easy ( no one said it would be, right?)  So I'm busting my butt to get the pounds off before I can even get to the big dance.

So what am I doing to keep the spoiled brat at bay and make progress toward losing that first 30 pounds?

1. I'm eating small meals throughout the day.  In my former teacher life that just wasn't going to happen. Now that I have a desk job with a permanent spot from which I don't often wander, it's pretty easy for me to graze.  My meals consist of protein bars, yogurt, fruit, a chicken salad kit, and repeat of the fruit and yogurt.  I have to get my veggies in at the evening meal, but that is working pretty well.

2. I am drinking at least 64 oz of water a day and trying to make it 100+.  I feel better when I do drink more water.  Plus, I've pretty much given up drinking soda.  Water is free, anyway.

3. I'm walking.  I was walking 30 - 45 minutes a day after work. Well, now I get up earlier and walk for 15 minutes in the morning.  Then after lunch I go out and walk another 15 minutes. In the evening I take the dogs for a walk.  3 dogs - that's 2 15-20 minute walks so I can handle them safely.

4. Taking the stairs -  no more elevator.  I don't often have to go to other floors at work but when I do- it's the stairs I take.  And on that lunch walk I'm doing, on the return trip I am in the basement of our building and I walk to the 4th floor by the stairs.  Today my inner spoiled brat didn't want to do the stairs.  I stood there running excuses past myself for a good 2 minutes.  I envisioned my fellah's look of disapproval if I let myself off the hook.  I felt the guilt of skipping it.  So I did the stairs.  I can't go fast.  I want to drop at the top. But by golly, I did it. 

5. I've cut out a lot of random carbs.  I just prefer eating my self-prescribed diet of fruit and bars and stuff because I know what I'm getting for nutrients and calories.  If left to just free-range feed, I don't do well and I know this.  I have to just be on point always.

And I'm seeing results. The scale doesn't show me much, but I refuse to let that bother me.  I can see in my face and neck that I look better - cripes, I think I've lost a chin.  My clothes definitely it better. I'm missing a saddle bag on my right hip and can't wait for the left one to disappear, too. The non-scale victories are plenty satisfying, especially when the scale doesn't show progress.  I don't need no stinking scale to tell me.

I hope that I am making life-style changes that will last me a lifetime.  Slow and steady.  Changes by change. I may not like every change but change?   It's a good thing.

Exercise to exorcise.....and what else I'm learning

One area I need to improve upon is emotional eating and mindless eating.  Strangely enough, being more mindful of when I eat and why I eat has made me think about food a whole lot more than before.  So now instead of eating mindlessly or emotionally, I'm worrying and fussing about eating in general.   I think this is just a temporary thing - something for me to sort thru as I tear down my old food habit fortress and rebuild new practices for sustaining myself.

Exercise - not a fan.  Let's be clear right there.  I have to make myself get off my butt and haul my carcass around to get in my daily exercise.  I'd much rather flop on the couch than get in 45 minutes of walking or 10000 steps a day.  BUT - I know that the walking I do does more for me than improve my heart/body health.  My walks clear the cobwebs and bullshit from my brain so that I can get and keep my head on straight.

(Pain & Panic from Hercules by Disney)

WALKING AS EXORCISM:  Seriously, when I walk to clear my head, the demons that typically chase around in there go away. I think they are allergic to the amount of oxygen and serotonin that surges through my brain when I'm walking and focusing on keeping up the pace.  DAMMIT! The experts are on to something with this idea of doing something active when head hunger it telling me to eat eat eat.  Seriously, though, I do find that I am calmer and more rational after I have taken a walk.   That desire to eat with reckless abandon goes away - either because it feels good to accomplish the walk or because I am too tired after to drag my butt off the couch in search of food.  The point is, it helps.

I'm trying some different things with eating these days.  First of all, I'm being very conscious of what I bring to work with me to eat. I've got chicken salad kits (one a day), 2 protein bars from Aldi - I eat one as breakfast and one as a snack, a grapefruit, an apple, and cheese sticks.  When it's gone, it's gone.  I don't go to the snack machine or get a soda.  I try really hard to drink over 100 oz of water every day as well. It keeps me full and makes me aware of when I am truly hungry vs. being bored and thinking eating will occupy my time.  Maybe it sounds like not enough food - it does to me, but I do manage to get plenty of calories and protein in by the end of the day.  The hardest part of this is that when I get home from work I am hungry enough to eat my own foot.  So, the last few days I've been eating protein and a veg when I get home and calling it supper.  That means that my son has to fend for himself, but if I cook for him I will eat that meal as well and that just can't happen.  Later in the evening I'll have a fat free yogurt and call it good for the day.  Part of my mindset is to eat 200-400 calories under the 2000 I am allowed so I don't go over - which happens way too often if I'm not mindful.

So why isn't the scale moving?  I dont' know.   We'll write it off to a few things - I'm walking and building muscles that weigh more than fat; I'm taking vitamins that are encouraging growth of these muscles; my thyroid condition makes it hard to lose weight.  The scale hates me is my favorite.

I know I am doing the right things right and that results will follow. In the meantime, I walk and remain focused.  What else can I do?

10 Tips for Dealing with Stress

I work in what used to be 'the commission on aging', so I come into contact with a vast array of people.  In my work I maintain the facebook pages for our company.  These tips come from a caregiver website, but I think they really apply to the fight to lose weight.  I see myself in quote a few of these, especially #5.

Tips and Techniques for Dealing with Stress

By Dr. Rita Nachen Gugel

Change is an expected part of our daily lives today. Dealing with it so that YOU control IT rather than vice versa is an important and positive force in controlling your life. Try a few of these tips.

1. Accept what you cannot change. Take a tip from AA. Change what you can, if it bothers you. But, if you cannot change it, learn to live with it.

2. Face up to your problems. Sort them out, and see which ones are real and which are simply imagined. Deal with them as they are, and not what you think they are.

3. Deal with one problem at a time. Sort out your priorities, and deal with them in the order of their importance to you.

4. Be flexible. Give in once and a while. If you do, others will too.

5. Don’t hold all of your worries inside yourself—talk it out. Frequently we swallow our unhappiness (along with candy, cake, ice cream, etc.) because we can’t let the problems out. Talk to someone. A burden shared is much less of a burden.

6. Work off Stress. Physical outlets for stress help your body to fight off many of the negative results of stress.

7. Get enough rest/relaxation/sleep. Give your body a chance to recover from day to day. Lack of sleep and rest will only make matters worse for you.

8. Avoid “self medication.” A “spoonful of sugar” may make the “medicine go down,” but it does your body no good. Sugar, alcohol, nicotine, and ice cream may all feel good going down, but they make matters worse—from the inside. They add to your body’s physical stresses, thus making dealing with external stresses much harder.

9. “Take time to smell the roses.” Have some fun. Relax.

10. Think about and do something for others. A little altruism never hurt. It even makes people feel better about themselves.

11. Be the “captain of your ship.” If you are not happy with your life, think about what’s wrong or missing, and then plan the necessary actions to change it to coincide with your needs and desires for your life.

12. Work on your relationships with those who share your life. Don’t hold back your feelings. Share them with your family and friends and co-workers. It can help to decrease tensions.

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http://www.caregiver.com/articles/general/tips_for_stress.htm