Tipping the scales

So standing on the scale and not recording my weight for a couple days has made me figure a few things a little differently.

1. My right leg is my dominant, it's the one I put most of my weight on when standing.
2. Standing on the scale, leaning to the right makes me look like I weigh more.
3. That's why when standing on my right leg, the numbers on the scale would swing up and down.
4. I think I actually weigh a lot less then I'd thought.
5. Therefore, I'm progressing still on par with my prior weight loss and no, I have not got a plateau like my last entry suggests.

Happy 420 lbs to me!!! That's a 48 lb loss!

I looked in the mirror at home yesterday. I realized I have some random and super gross varicose veins in my upper-thigh side hip area. How the heck did that even happen?! Maybe sleeping on it? That is my dominant sleeping side. But eww. And my legs have gone from pleasantly plump to blue-cottage-cheesy since I started this new lifestyle change. I definitely need to look into really good lotion and an anti-cellulite scrubber. Yuck.

One of my best friends told me today how good I look. Well, thanks! But I'm a work in progress!

Annoyed

I thought I was losing weight so fast but I seem to have stalled.

I've gone from +468 to 435 give or take. I thought I was doing better. I realized when I stood I the scale today that if I lean to the right slightly, I show more weight, and less if I lean to the left. So of course I begin second-guessing myself and while I'd LOVE to be the 420 it COULD read, I am concerned that the 435 it seems to read at a balance could be horribly wrong, and I'm TERRIFIED that I'm actually 450, and I'm never going to lose enough weight to have a baby.

I read this blog entry today and it gave me some feelings of healing. I have been bullied and discriminated against due to my obesity for years. And it's near impossible to lose weight because of my PCOS, and I'm not ovulating or even menstruating regularly, so I know that contributes to my being so fat. But nothing makes me more hopeless than when the doctors refuse to help me, treat me like a leper, and just try to foist me off on specialists or bariatric surgeons.

I guess I'm having a hopeless day today. I didn't sleep much yesterday before work, my mother started chemotherapy again this week for her colon cancer metastasis nodes in her lungs, and my husband is working an awkward shift that means I hardly get any sleep before I have to get up and bring him in. And by the time I get home and lay down, even if I don't sleep before I bring him in (like yesterday) I still lay there, sleepless, until after 4 p.m. which makes things even harder because I have to pick him up at 9 p.m. and I had to drink a huge coffee to get thru my overnight shift tonight.

And of course not sleeping is fucking with my head, making me paranoid, depressed, anxious, weepy, and suicidal. So needless to say, I'm not having a great day, and I just can't wait for it to be over so I can go home and at least TRY to sleep and feel better.

Worst part of all this is I have been feeling so nauseated throughout the day and evenings and had breast tenderness. I know there is no way in hell I'm pregnant because I'm not cycling. And it makes me want to scream and pull my hair out because that's nothing I would want more than a baby with my husband. And it will probably never happen because I just can't seem to shake the weight.

Just to clarify...

Wow. So... in the 37 days since I changed my lifestyle and diet by cutting out wheat and sugar, I've lost 23 lbs.

Let's do the math. 37 days is 5.28 weeks. 23 lbs divided by 5.28 weeks is 4.35 lbs PER WEEK. Holy moley.

I logged my food intake from the last 24 hours into the "Lose it" app and I guess I just don't eat as much as I thought I did. I've only had 1741 calories since noon yesterday, when I got up. This includes having McDonald's for lunch today.

I'm speechless.

A Month and Then Some

I realized that it's only been over a month since I made these lifestyle changes, cutting out sugar and wheat. I've lost about 20 lbs. I'm sleeping better. My anxiety is better. Everyone says I look better, but who really can tell?

So that's 15% of my goal, right?
That's what I'd call progress!

How Many Miles

Maybe I've hit a wall, I don't know. But my newer sense of self-confidence led me to wear something I hadn't dared. And I look HUGE. The fabric is incredibly unflattering, I look like I'm trying to wear two different outfits at once.

I'm at work. I just looked down and saw, really saw how huge my belly is. And I realized that no matter how much I feel like I'm progressing right now, it's still just a drop of water in the ocean.

How far do I have to go? I don't know. How long will it take me? I don't know. I think at this point there is simply no real way to "know" anything.

I thought I was going to break down and despair. Why don't visible results happen more quickly?!

Then, I started to write this blog entry and I realized this: I'm still in the starting gate of this journey. I can't start asking are we there yet? When we have barely even begun. I have a lot further to go! And maybe I'll feel better about everything if I create some goals, both short and long term. Then I can measure my progress. This way, I am not stuck in the cycle of anguish and depression. Rome wasn't built in a day! Neither was I!

Update

So I thought I ought to update.

I'm still on my diet. The drastic changes have become habit now, and life is still rolling along.

My Diet/Lifestyle Changes:

-Cut down on sugar
-Remove gluten as much as possible
-Drink more water
-Move around more

I cut my sugar consumption down to 10 grams or less per serving of anything processed, with the exception of slim fast drinks. It was hard at first, but I feel pretty good about it now. I can even take my coffee without sugar, as long as I use plenty of cream. I have gotten pretty good about not wanting to binge on sugar because of an amazing realization.

Sugar is what caused a great deal of my anxiety.

I never realized until I cut it out. How I found this out, is my mother made some homemade baked beans. I LOVE beans so much. She served me some. They were sickly sweet. She assured me that she'd only added maple syrup. So I ate them, and they were delicious. However, soon thereafter I spent the rest of the evening having panic attacks! I looked on the jug of maple syrup and a serving is 2 tablespoons. Each serving contains 51 grams of sugar!!! Well, no wonder I reacted so badly! So now I make doubly sure to read labels and know exactly what I'm eating.

Removing gluten was pretty easy, but I never realized how gluten is literally everywhere! And I ate SO much of it! Within days of cutting out all wheat products (bread, pasta, cake, etc) I felt lighter. And out only took days for my family to notice that I'm reducing too. I feel better and I look better. Less bloated.

Drinking water has been really hard! I've never been someone who really desired water. I grew up on sugary drinks. I love carbonation. So I switched to seltzer. It's not bad. And there are some pretty yummy seasonal flavors of Polar Seltzer out right now. I really enjoy the Champagne Strawberry flavor! But I'm doing a lot better than I have in the past with drinking. I feel good about it.

Moving around has not been much of a problem. We moved recently, and I had a lot of things to do. Now, I'm doing a lot here at home while I wait for my new job to start. I never realized how much WORK it is simply keeping a household running. Stay-at-home spouses, I salute you!

I can go up the stairs now without killing my knees and back. I walk briskly through the grocery store chasing after my mom on the motorized cart. I feel like my posture is better when I stand and walk. I feel more like myself again and less like Jabba the Hutt.

Best part is I'm getting more to the point where I'm feeling my clothes fitting better. This past summer I was so fat my sports bras wouldn't stay on my boobs comfortably. Now, my boobs are looking amazing in all my tops! I am finding my waist again. I don't only have to wear yoga pants.

Win.

Living with anxiety

Living with crippling anxiety is like living the worst day of your life every day.

I'm constantly terrified that I'm going to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, get spoken to sharply, that I don't know the 'rules' and that I'll break an unforgivable one unconsciously. It's like having to carry pots of boiling water and the handle on the pot is loose.

I don't know how else to describe it.

And then when things seem like they are going to settle into a routine and I feel like I'm getting the hang of life or whatever, things change without warning and I'm thrown into a tailspin. Ever been on a ride at an amusement park, or been in a scary situation where you feel your life is in danger? That's what I feel like. My heart pounds, my hands shake, and I feel like I'm going to cry and throw up at the same time.

What, exactly, am I afraid of? I don't know. Yet still I fear.

I'm sure the excess cortisol from the stress I am under is a good part of why I'm so fat.

Why can't I let go? What's the worst that could happen?

I don't know. And that's what terrifies me.

When is enough too much?

I've always loved food. Everything about it. The smells, the tastes, how you feel after eating. That glow of content. It's like a drug. It was a drug. The best drug.

I abused food because I was abused. My father is a psychoawaypath who loand positiveved me intensely until one day he lost interest. And I filled the void with food, avoiding my feelings. One thing my dad hated more than the normal stuff a spoiled youngest-son white middle-class Vermonter male hates more than anything (besides gays, democrats, immigrants/minorities, being wrong) was fatties.

So I got fat.

Looking back on it now, it was probably very passive aggressive of me to take the anger I couldn't express towards him and turn it inward on myself. I made myself the walking, talking, eating antithesis of all he thought a woman should be.

And I did it fabulously.

Oh, Heather, you'll never have any friends if you're fat.

Bullshit.

You'll never have a boyfriend.

Bullshit.

No one will want to marry you.

Bullshit.

You'll never get pregnant.

Bullshit.

You'll have health problems, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Bullshit.

Ever the contrarian, in spite of my weight (maybe even because of?), I went on to do all the things a woman does in her life. Because I had to develop a (gasp!) personality, I learned to use intelligence, humor, and sarcasm as both honey to draw people, and a whip to drive them away. I had (and have) many friends. I had no lack of suitors and sexual partners. I have married (twice!) and have given birth to 4 incredible and perfect children. And my weight never got in the way of my happiness.

What? You may ask yourself. Then why in the world did you use food as a drug? Why did you not use your abundance of natural, god-given talents to make yourself happy? I would answer you, then, that I'm a liar.

The queen of bullshit. Full to the top with delusion, avoidance, and an inability to accept personal weakness.

I would look at myself and I wouldn't see the fat. I'd see my gorgeous hair, my sparkling smile, my sexy geek glasses, my freckles, my small hands... anything but the fat.

The long and short of it? I disassociate. And when I do, I simply do not "see" what's wrong with me. I don't acknowledge it. It's the equivalent of a child hiding her head under a blanket and saying that they are invisible.

Do it long enough and you'll start to believe it.

See- from a mental health standpoint you might say, but look! She loves herself! Isn't that the point? Yeah. It is. But when you go to the doctor and get weighed and you realize that you've ballooned to a earth-shattering 468 lbs, you realize that maybe you should begin to examine yourself and your life and see what the hell happened!

What haven't I mentioned? Oh yeah. Remember at the beginning I was talking about my dad's neglect and abuse bringing out the worst in me? It also triggered childhood-onset bipolar disorder. It was diagnosed when I was 14, but I remember experiencing mania as young as age 4 or 5. I've also suffered with anxiety, probably that's the thing that even now I suffer from the most, besides depression. Oh yeah, and this stuff might be lived with if I took a cocktail of medications... side effects usually being weight gain which despite my nonchalance up until this point about my weight I still was unable to accept.

So. Unmedicated. What did I do?

Self medicate. With food. I ate because I was sad I was fat and crazy. And it was wonderfully horribly ineffective. Because, at the end of the day, I was still fat and still crazy. Only fatter.

So here I am, 468 lbs, and if I could render the fat down what would it be? Feelings.

Today I decided that enough is enough!!! I am going to lose 300 lbs of feelings. Because I'm sick of literally wearing my heart on my sleeve. And to prove it, I decided to start this blog.

I know that losing weight won't fix what's wrong with my mind. I know losing weight isn't a substitute for good mental health practices. I know that my problems won't vanish or decrease as I reduce my size. Just like moving away doesn't solve your problems. You can't run from yourself. Not really. So I think I have a leg up on people who believe otherwise.

Losing weight WILL, however, make me feel that I have some control, which will hopefully decrease my anxiety. It will help me sleep better. It will enable me to keep up with my gorgeous, sexy, fit husband. It will give me a good lifestyle and positive example to impart to my children. It will be good for me spiritually as well, because in my mind and in my heart I am svelte, not squat.

Tomorrow is a new day to make good choices and stop hiding from how I feel. I need to face myself and my feelings and find better ways to cope. Food fixes nothing. I need a cure, not a band-aid. And bit by bit, I'm going to literally work my fat ass off and go From Squat to Svelte. Because I DESERVE to have the body of my dreams. Just because god gave me a fixer upper, doesn't mean I need to suffer in silence. No. I am going to DIY this shack into a palace, because I DESERVE IT.