On July 3rd, I went to get my hair cut, as I sat in the chair, looking at those less than flattering mirrors, while the girl farted around to get the cape around me, I looked and saw something I'm less than proud of. I literally felt obese for the first time in my life. And I knew I looked it. I had to fight back tears. I have always been proud that when I do gain weight, I keep my curves, but somehow my curves have developed into rolls, no not delicious dinner rolls (like cheddar bay biscuits), more like those hard, day old, can't take a bite without breaking your tooth, rolls. No one likes those rolls, especially not me. The first thing I did was pick up a candy bar on the way home...I mean, that's totally logical right? I got home and I was distant and honestly mean to my husband, who I had convinced now for the last two months that I was trying to lose weight even though I did very little to actually do it.
The next day I woke up and I'm not sure where the straw was that broke the camels back, but it was probably somewhere between breakfast, cookies and lunch. I sat down on the couch and started to cry to my ever-understanding husband. I had to swallow my pride, which, to me, is harder than swallowing liver or a bug, and I told him I needed his help. Not only is he a math genius (and losing weight is a math game) but he's done this himself and kept it off. He reassured me he'd do whatever I needed his help with and said "Let's start now." Which, you NEVER start NOW!!! Don't you get like a week or so to binge first? And the following day, July 5th, was our anniversary and I didnt' want to "ruin" our anniversary by not being able to go out to eat (and pig out). He made me promise I would not "freak out" on him, which, I'm known to do, often. And this subject is my most touchy. Well, within probably an hour of talking I freaked out him. Not my best moment. The next morning, I was still swallowing my pride, this time for a whole different reason, and finally said I was sorry and we moved on.
I found a journal to write things down (I'm a writer, I'd rather hand write stuff than type any day, okay that's probably not entirely true) and I wanted to make sure it was portable so I could take it with me. I also looked up some food places we could eat, looked up the nutrition information and found a few dishes I could pick from if we went out to eat. And we went on our way, and chose to make it an active date by spending the day crawling and climbing all over the St Louis City Museum. It was fabulous, I sweat all day, ate right and got to spend the day with my biggest supporter.
Fast forward through the week. We had set me up on 1200 calories a day (give or take 100). This was my choice. First, I need it off, I have so much to lose and I knew if I chose 1500 calories, some days I'd creep up to 1600 and that's not really much of a weight loss. I wrote down everything I ate and worked out I think everyday at least for 30 minutes. Well, I basically wrote everything I did/ate in that journal. How much I worked out, if there was something in the day that could throw me off (like a party, or just something that would get me out of my routine) and again, every bite I took. I measured every piece of food and used many online resources to look up calories in fruits and veggies (which obviously isn't on it, like with processed typed food).
The end of the week (a Thursday for me) I weighed in, a little worried, for whatever reason I thought I hadn't done enough. Sure enough I lost 3.8 pounds. I should be happy right? Well, I wasn't, my milk supply has gone away, almost entirely. This made me so sad and upset that it almost made me completely give up again. I was so worried about this and upon doing some research realized I shouldn't have dropped my calories that low and I definitely shouldn't have done it "cold turkey". Meaning, I should have spent a week at 1800, then a week or two at 1500, then finally made it down to 1200. But I pulled myself together, realized she's 4 months old and decided I was just going to continue on with what I was doing, nurse as much as she wanted, supplement if I had to and see what the next two weeks has in store. Hopefully my milk supply won't keep going down, as it has again yet this week. Or maybe I can somehow get it back up.
The biggest downside so far, is that I've taken up diet soda again. It's "calorie free" so when I want something other than water or tea, that has flavor (and caffeine!!!) I drink it, and kind of a lot again. I'm hoping to fix this also. I did like the 2 cups of coffee a day and then the rest water, but I can't drink coffee without creamer and some days I cannot 'afford' those extra calories. However, come to think of it, this may by why my milk supply has fallen, I'm drinking less water than typical. And, for whatever reason when I do start to drink a lot of diet soda, Josie seems to get fussy (which she's not a fussy baby AT ALL). AND I just pledged to "fast" diet soda for the next 30 days in support of my friend battling cancer. So, it HAS to go!
Well, today, as I've decided to weigh in on Fridays, I get on the scale this morning. Now, let's talk through some things here. I can't really get up and take a nice walk/jog before I get on the scale or sit around and try to poop before I get on the scale because I'm woken up at whatever time Josie decides to wake up (lately 3:30 and then again about 5:30/6). So I literally go straight from the bed, pee and then get on the scale. This week I've been not so great about writing stuff down, it's been a lot harder being organized and able to weigh things with my husband being back at work and my kids have REALLY tried my patience this week. And, I've had a hard time making time to work out, I probably worked out 4 - 5 times this week. My milk supply is still low and I was starting to feel super guilty about it and Josie has had some major issues with waking up in the middle of the night (which she hasn't done since 6 weeks old), so it's made me unbearably (is that a word?) tired. So, I get on the scale, my assumption is I probably haven't lost any weight, and I'll just do better next week with my food. Well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My stupid body GAINED 3.4 pounds?!?! Are you freakin' kidding me? Pretty much everything I lost last week and I put it all back on? Why is this even happening? And the crap about muscle weight and water weight and blah blah blah, I know is just to try to make me feel better, well, it doesn't.
So now what do I do? This weight has to come off, it's not a vain thing (even though I dream about the vain stuff sometimes) it's honestly because I'm not healthy and not active and not happy and those things are only going to get worse. I want to give up, I want to crawl into a whole, with donuts and a cake and just hibernate there for a couple days, that is what I WANT to do. But it's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to get up in the morning, have my 2 cups of coffee, have a couple eggs with Healthy Life bread, drink a ton of water (and maybe some tea) and get myself together.
I sing "Just The Way You Are" (Bruno Mars) to my daughter's multiple times a day, I dont' want them to have body issues and self esteem issues like I've been plagued with all my life, but how can I expect them to feel good about themselves when their mom is unhealthy and doesn't feel good about herself at all....
I'm going to try to post weekly again, and I'm going to try to keep up with the funny things that often happen around my house.....
Like this:
Last week we had a surprise 60th birthday party for my mother-in-law. I just knew we had this left over helium tank from last summer in our basement, so I bought a huge bag of balloons, about an hour before the party guests were going to arrive I sit down to start filling the balloons. First, I think it's weird because the valve for the tank doesn't fit the balloon hole very well, so it's leaking a lot. Hmmm, weird. Then, the balloons are not floating, then are falling, heavy, almost like bricks. Hmmm, weird. Can you have bad helium? So, I suck some air out of a balloon and it makes me gag a little, so I say to my step daughter, "Does my voice sound high?" Which it didn't...at all. Hmmmm, weird. I decide to just give up and blow a few up with just my own hot air and let the kids play with them. I put the tank in the spare room/baby room and move on. Fast forward about 6 hours, my husband comes walking in with the green tank to give to my brother-in-law to use to charge the freon in our air conditioner.... I was totally confused.... Yup, that's right, I sucked refrigerant, like a complete idiot. Thank goodness I didn't freeze my lungs :)
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