A new approach to food

Over the past two weeks, Dan has been to the gym three times each week, and I made it three times and then just once. We took Saturday off this week, just to sleep in and relax.  It turned out not to be such a relaxing day, after all.

Thursday was our eleventh wedding anniversary. Since we weren't able to do anything to celebrate then and we unexpectedly ended up kid-free on Friday, I decided we should enjoy a date night. Dan agreed so we saw Furious 7 and enjoyed dinner at LongHorns--thanks to Dan's momma. We were still in bed by midnight, which is pretty late for us early risers, but I forgot my meds before bed. This left me in a bit of a funk on Saturday, and Dan has a sore on his hand that was paining him and left him in a funk on Saturday, also. Not so much fun chillin' on a Saturday when you're in pain or just emotionally empty. 

So, today, we had to make up for things we didn't get around to yesterday. We've spent a month at the UgL now, and I've already noticed that I'm stronger. When I got to drive for Livi's field trip just over a week ago, I was on my feet any time I wasn't in the bus and my back wasn't killing me all day. Yay! It was pretty sore last Saturday, but I'll take any progress I can get. Dan decided that we needed to make some serious changes to our eating habits if we're really going to lose weight and be healthy, and I couldn't disagree. The UgL did a 42 day weight loss challenge for folks to start off the New Year with and one of the ladies at the Lab told Dan about it. I haven't gotten into how strict the rest is, but week one is intense. It's your basic concept of cutting the carb cravings and rebooting your metabolism, which is far harder than it sounds. We'll do six days of 20 grams or fewer carbs, switch to eating smaller meals five times a day, and and then we get a cheat/re-fuel meal on Sunday evening. They recommend that we journal daily and track our emotional and physical feel, so I'll try. If you're going to be reading all of these, it could be ugly by Wednesday or Thursday. Caffeine is not disallowed in moderation, however, I generally have my caffeine with a nice serving of sugar, whether in coffee, tea or soda. Detox is not going to be fun, but hopefully, by Friday, I'll be feeling the perks of the purge. Wish us lots of luck! :)  Dan thinks that the caffeine won't be a problem for him because he doesn't think it's really an issue for him, but we shall see...

Oh, yeah, the things we got to do today since we didn't do then yesterday... We sat down and about halfway mapped out our meals for the first three days. The challenge recommends prepping on Sunday and Wednesday. I cooked up four pounds of chicken and cut it into bite sized pieces and weighed it out into Dan sized and Eeka sized portions. It took us forever figuring out what to buy and how much, so that's all we got done tonight. Tomorrow, we'll have scrambled eggs (one whole egg each plus extra whites) with green peppers and mushrooms for breakfast before work. I finally bought a pill fob for my key chain so I can take my metformin with breakfast like I'm supposed to, even if we have to take the eggs to go and eat them in the break room at work. After we get home from our first shift, we'll eat again. Probably a nice salad with chicken since it's ready already and then we'll get Dan to the doc to check out his hand, I'll hit the gym and we'll try to prep the rest of the veggies. We've got a busy day planned but a lot will depend on when we can get Dan to the doc. I'm thinking we might just pack a couple containers of broccoli and chicken that we can zap in the microwave at work and eat before we head out. Dan and I will discuss that in the morning and see if we have time for it. I feel like we didn't do much prep at all, but it already feels better knowing we have something halfway ready to eat. Maybe I could get used to this.

The hardest parts of this challenge are not about the eating. They are mental and financial.  Dan and I spent over forty dollars for three days of food for just us. I'm hoping the stuff after the first week will be much cheaper or we won't make it through the whole challenge simply because we won't have the budget to allow the healthier foods. I hate that this is a drawback to being healthier, but it is. I'm praying for ways to get through this from the financial standpoint to see if we can maintain healthier habits. Dan's wanting to get another job that will get us some room for financial growth, but I don't want to have to go back to cheap carbs until then. Even budget cooks I find online are budgeting on a whole lot more than we have to spend. My friend, Edye, always says how our Daddy in heaven has deep pockets. Here's hoping He wants to pick up the grocery tab this month.

The mental part of this challenge is two fold for me. First of all, it's really easy for me to see all the ways that this won't work, i.e. finances. Pastor Matt said this morning that we need to make a decision and take a step forward even if we're only 51% sure, just to get started. He said we often don't make decisions because we only see one way to go and a hundred reasons it won't work so we quit before we even start. He said we need to have a hundred ideas of where to go and just pick the best one. I've got the whole system backwards, so I'm trying to move forward positively. Today's message was justa knockin' on the door of my brain and I couldn't ignore it, so I'm trying. 

Secondly, we have to change the way we look at food. That's what this challenge is really about. Changing from living to eat to eating to live. Seeing food as fuel, not comfort. Man, that's hard for me to even type out. I just looks so wrong to me. I've known food as love my whole life. Part of me doesn't want to change that. I know I need to change that. I know if I can't change that, I'll never truly be able to lose this weight and be healthy. I KNOW that. I don't doubt it. I can't deny it. It's in caps so it's gotta be true. ;)  But I don't like it. We're going all in on this. I'm gonna give it my best shot because I don't want to be diabetic when I'm 45. I don't want a heart attack before I'm 50. I want to see all of my kids graduate and find their special someone and make me a grandma (years from now, not too soon on that!) I want to be there for them like Momma and Daddy have always been there for me. So I KNOW I have to change the way I look at food. I HAVE to get better or I won't be here for my kiddos. But I still don't like it. And it's a big change and it scares me. Diabetes and heart attacks scare me too, but I think change scares me more. 

Procrastination...

Well, my original plan was to be blogging daily, but Dan said, don't put so much pressure on yourself, just blog weekly.  I thought, good plan. However, as you may have noticed, it's been over two weeks since my last post. Most of the problem is that I need to clean my desk, and sitting down to write is a not-so-subtle reminder, so I avoid writing. Unfortunately, now it is almost three in the morning, and I can't sleep, so here I am at my messy desk in the middle of the night trying to work out some kinks. I'll start with the health adventure and then on to the kinky stuff.

Of the last two weeks, the first was pretty much as I expected. We hit the gym three times, working around work and kids and it was a struggle but we did it. Food was a challenge as it will continue to be for a while, I'm sure. Maybe forever. Week two was a different story.

Week two started out with car trouble that made our Monday gym time impossible. We couldn't go on Tuesday because we were getting the car taken care of. Wednesday was a last minute extra shift at work that Dan had to do and so I took one too. Thursday and Friday I had trips that lasted all day. Dan made it to the gym on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, poor guy. I'm proud of him, but he is one sore puppy. I made it on Saturday.

This is not acceptable to me so I looked back to see what I could have changed and I realized it's my own perspective. On Wednesday, I turned down the extra shift they asked me to do because Payton had an orthodontist appointment and I was going to the gym, but then Dan didn't have a choice on his shift change because Wednesdays are weird work days for him anyway. So, once he said he'd be back at 12:50 (gym being from 12-12;45) I felt that I might as well be back because I had to bring Dan back and I was afraid that the gym wasn't a legit excuse to turn down the shift. They basically count on me doing this particular extra shift when it's needed because it fits in with my regular route and I usually say yes when they ask me to help out. So, I felt pressured. That's not to say they actually pressured me, but I felt pressured. I talked to Dan about this and I realized that going to the gym is vitally important. I have to take care of my health and this is far more important than an extra shift. It's not my fault if they plan on me saying yes and I choose to say no. That's my choice, not theirs. And if I don't take care of myself first, I'll end up with heart problems or diabetes and these could both cost me my CDL and my job. Me first; this is a hard concept for me to swallow. But I'm working on it.


Now, here comes the part where I work out the kinks that are keeping me awake. I can't promise great sense here, so proceed at your own risk.

Payton's move to his dad's is just over a month away. That in itself makes me want to cry. I'm so not ready for this. I know there were only two more years he'd be with me anyway, but this hurts in ways that are hard to explain. I've had the honor of being able to help raise five kids. My step-son lived with us for a year and a half when his mom took him back and we couldn't stop her. My neice lived with us from 13 to 17 and then ran away to get away from us. We let Ash go live with her other mom once her other mom finally wanted to be a mom and Ash felt torn. Now Payton's leaving. He's leaving to be with his best friend/cousin, Brian. He's leaving to work on a better relationship with his dad. He's leaving to try to have a better chance of being noticed by college football scouts. Mostly, he's leaving to spend a year of high school with Brian. I understand this. I know this was a hard choice for him. I know he's trying to be an adult and make adult decisions. I know he's still struggling with leaving. But he's leaving. He's not leaving me, he's going to be there, not leaving here. But he's leaving me. On one hand, four out of five kids I helped raise left me. A seriously heartbreaking track record. On the other hand, my baby boy is leaving. When Aaron and I split up and my depression was making life harder, Payton was my reason to get up in the morning. I'm his stability. I'm the one person who didn't leave him like the siblings. But he's a big chunk of my stability, too. I know people survive this stuff all the time. Livi's going to need me to be strong, but I'm not sure I can...

Getting started

We started our adventure this week and it's been ok, but not great yet. I had breakfast five days and took my meds four of those days. Considering that I haven't been taking my morning meds at all, I feel like this is progress. Now that we have our food stamps for the month, we can plan ahead for breakfasts again and this should be able to become a more steady habit. Cross your fingers!  ;)

We were going to start at the gym on Monday, but Dan couldn't breathe. He was using his rescue inhaler repeatedly and we finally did two breathing treatments with his nebulizer before bed and that seemed to help. Weather changes mess him up. We considered going to the UgL on Tuesday, but Payton had an appointment so we started on Wednesday. I'm still a little sore today.

The last time we went to the UgL, last May, neither Dan nor I was able to complete the workout. We had to give up and go home. We both felt a lot of anxiety about going back and whether or not we could do this. Melissa, our trainer, modified the workout and spent a lot of one on one time with each of us. We made it through, and we are both still a little sore today. But we know we can do this. You'd think that if you've already done it, doing it again shouldn't be such a scary thing, but somehow it really was. But we broke through the wall.

Today, I have a trip that starts at 1:30 and we're going to work out at noon, so I'm gonna sponge bath and change clothes and hope that's good enough. If not, I'll rethink this next time but we don't want to start letting inconveniences stop us already. They really worked to help us be able to do this financially, so I feel like not giving our best would be letting Melissa and Fernando and Erin down as much as ourselves and our kids. I'm trying to be very honest here in the blog too, even when we screw up or backslide, so I hope to be accountable to you all, too. 

Accountability is really hard for me. My depression grabs each minor setback and starts diving into that dark pit that won't let me out. Then I quit talking to anyone I should be accountable to because I don't want to be letting so many people down. I know that most of the people who read this love me. Why else would you be reading this? And you want me to succeed, so instead of reprimands, I am much more likely to get encouragement through my honesty, which is good, because I'm really good at reprimanding myself.

Our foods haven't been great this week but I just updated the budget for April and we don't have the money do to a lot of stupid stuff, like dollar menu or gas station hot dogs. Since we budget our money far better than our time or health, I'm trying to use that as a tool to help us in other areas. No fast food is a good tool. Also, our driver window on the car doesn't roll down, so a drive-thru is a big pain in the tookus. Dan's checking out cook books for cheap, healthy, low carb recipes and we checked all the grocery ads for good deals. We have noticed that there are not a lot of good sales on the things we are looking to buy now that we want to eat healthier. If anyone has some good recipes, especially crock pot stuff, let us know.  :) I keep thinking of freezer meals and stocking up but we just have our little fridge freezer and the idea of prepping twenty meals at a time kinda freaks me out. I don't even think we have room in our kitchen for a project like that.  But I was thinking that maybe if I could prep three or four meals worth of one thing, that would be a start and I could maybe build from there? I'm not sure yet. Guess we'll see how things go.

A Healthy Budget

So, we weighed in at the UgL last night.  I decided that since the other scales weren't agreeing, I'll track my progress with the scale at the gym.  According to that scale, I'm 309.6. Still not a pretty number, but it's a starting place.  My body fat percentage is 46.something. I don't remember what.  Fernando told us that once our accounts are set up, we'll be able to see all of our stats that are recorded and that we'll be doing check ins every six to eight weeks. I think that's all good for me, because it gives me a time frame to look forward to rather than looking for infinitesimal changes every week. Also, if my weight is not changing much but my body fat is changing, or my measurements, I'll be able to see that there is some kind of progress.

I was thinking about the budget thing a lot yesterday, how you have to do your current budget and see how bad you are doing before you can build to make progress. This was my first health budget. It's hard to do because it's painful to look at where you really are, but you will never know if you're making progress if you don't truly know where you started. This got me to thinking about payday loans. Dan and I used to be stuck in a payday loan loop until someone who loved us helped us get out of them, under the conditions that we would never do that again. It was kind of hard to not get a payday loan when things were tight at first. If you've never done that, thank God! If you have done this, you understand how hard it is to change your way of thinking and to get the thought of getting a payday loan out of your head. It occurred to me that Dan and I are living a payday loan lifestyle. We have been looking for short term fixes for long term problems. We are hungry, tired and in a hurry, so we grab a burger off the dollar menu. This does not help our finances, our health, or any other aspect in our lives. It's just a payday loan for our health. In the long run, it's hurting us far more than it's helping us. It's taking money we could be spending on real food, adding unhealthy crap and weight to our bodies and the long term costs of the health problems on the horizon are going to outweigh the cheap up front cost to our finances and our time. As with the payday loans, the interest is killing us.

Just like with the finances, we have to take baby steps to make real changes. I know this is not going to happen all at once. We are going to do well and then bobble and have to get back on track. But we've come miles with our finances and we can do the same with our health. We just have to remember that a stumble is natural, expected and ok. Dan has been working on finding us better meals with lower carbs, and I am now eating breakfast each day so I can take my metformin. Two years ago, my A1C was at 5.9. Last summer it was at 6.0. They said a point a year is ok. I'm thinking a point a year leads me to 6.5 and diabetic by the time I'm 45 and that is NOT ok with me.

We're measured up and know where we stand. We are making small changes that we can live with and maintain. We may be rumblin', bumblin' and stumblin', but we're going to make real change.

Here we go again...

In the past week, I have been weighed twice. My doctor's scale read 300 while the health department read 311. I'm not sure whether to be annoyed at the difference or just horrified at such a nice, round number. On this note, among other reasons, Dan and I are refocusing on our personal well-being.

We signed up for the Underground Lab again for a full year, and we paid in advance. We now have each other to account to and the large sum of money we have spent to motivate us, as well as the trainers to kick our butts the concern and love of family to get us through the rough patches.

Tomorrow, we weight in. We'll learn weight, take measurements and get our body fat analyzed. It's not going to be a fun day because it's not going to be pretty, but we'll never know our own progress until we know exactly how bad we have it now. It's a lot like making your first budget and realizing you've got to make some serious changes to survive.

Wish us luck...

A New Beginning

TMI Warning!  This post contains highly personal details that may be disturbing to some.  I know I am not the only person feeling these things, so I will share anyway.  I will be as tasteful as possible and my intention is not to offend.  I will mark the offending passage so you can skip it if you like.  Thank you.

Exactly four weeks ago today, Dan and I completely changed our eating habits and began the Paleo lifestyle. Dan likes to research and so he dug up info on all kinds of diet changes and figured that this would be the best fit for our needs. It was easy to tweak so that we each could make adjustments for our individual health and the kids would not need completely separate meals.

I have to admit, after so many different diets and workout programs that were a bust, I did not exactly have my hopes up for great results. However, Dan's a great cook and started planning menus and helping more with the grocery shopping.  This made it a lot easier for me to stick with the program since all I had to do was eat.  :)  Then Dan suggested that he take over the vision card with our food assistance.

My first reaction was, "NO! I MUST MAINTAIN THE FACADE OF ULTIMATE CONTROL OF ALL THINGS!"

I didn't say this out loud, and once I mulled it over for a second or two, I realized that this was doable.  A week later, I couldn't thank him enough for lifting such a huge amount of stress off of me that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.

The first week was hard.  I was crashing bad from the lack of carbs and was crazy tired.  Add sugar withdrawals to that and you have one very grumpy Eeka.  I started working out of my funk about the time Dan hit his.  How bad were these crashes for us?  Let's just say that if we hit these lows at the same time and there was no reasonable thought between us, someone would have been sleeping in the car!  But, we've been through this type of thing before, so we knew it was temporary and we continued to work past it.

As we completed our second week, we were both finally back on an even keel and the worst of the physical cravings were over.  We have been eating so much better since we made this change, mainly because we are starting with whole foods and cooking at home.  We've spent far less eating out, even though our grocery bill has barely increased.  Week three, we realized that we are eating far less food at one time, Dan's love handles had flattened out and his tummy had shrunk.  POOP ALERT:  The only change I had noticed in  myself was that my poop was solid and floaty instead of mushy and sinking as I was used to. I was feeling better by eating better foods, but I was still breaking out the magnifying glass to try to find any sign of outward change.

***TMI***TMI***TMI***
On the fourth Monday of our new life, my period started.  As I put in my tampon, I realized that it was easier to place because there was no longer an extra layer of fat guarding the gates.  I have also developed heat rashes from time to time in the area where the lower tummy, a.k.a. front butt, overhangs my upper thighs.  I realized that the size of the heat rash danger zone seemed to have decreased.
***SAFE***SAFE***SAFE***

Now, these changes were not apparent to anyone but me, so I was very afraid that I had made them up in an unconscious effort to create hope.  I spent the week teetering between putting my faith in a false hope or giving up before I got too committed.  On Friday, I went to the doc for labs and had myself weighed.  When we started, I was 283 pounds.  On Friday, I weighed 269 pounds.

I could not believe I actually lost 14 pounds in less than four weeks, just by changing my diet!  I wasn't as strict with my food choices as Dan was and I hadn't put any effort into working out at all.  When Dan and I decided to have a little one-on-one celebration, we discovered that without as much extra fat in the way, we fit better. :)

Today, we have completed four weeks.  Tuesday, Dan will be weighed and have labs drawn and a blood pressure check.

Payton's going to help us get before pics, even though it's not totally before.  By the end of the week, we'll know if our body chemistry is doing as well as our weight loss or if we need to tweak our foods a bit more.

It's amazing to have hope of real change in our future!

The other parent phone call

I have issues.  If you have read this blog before, or know me in person, you already realize this.  So let's move on to the issue of the day.

Melissa called this evening.  Melissa is Dan's ex-wife and the mother of our daughter, Ash.  I never got around to turning my ringer on today, I guess, because I didn't hear the call come in.  She never calls.  Like, once a year?  Maybe?  There are definitely issues in communication, among other things.  Dan doesn't want to talk to her, so she and I usually do the talking and play nice for Ash's benefit.

Anyway, her message was the sixteenth message in my voice mail.  Ugh!  So, I deleted a handful of messages, hung up and called back.  (This was so I could see how much progress I had made before I call back in to my voice mail. . .  I know, issues.)  Message sixteen was short and to the point.  Melissa wants Dan to call her back so they can talk one on one.

What does this mean?  What's going on?  Did I do something to make her mad again?  Is she upset because I asked Ash when she's going to come see us next?  Is she going to try to keep Ash away from us MORE?  Do we need to call a lawyer?

I am good at a few things and I am QUEEN of the worst case scenario game.  I have no idea what's really going on, but I can't even think of a reason that might not be bad.  I know I cannot be the only person who does this.  It sucks.  I've had a really good day with the kids, done some productive things, got a nap, scheduled some appointments, ate a yummy steak salad for supper, hung with the kids and Willie.  Very good day.

My chest hurts now and I'm on the edge of tears.  This is just dumb!

I'm on happy pills and have been working really hard to not get caught up in following any slightly negative path to it's worst imaginable outcome.  I have made great strides is almost every area of my life.  Why can't I deal with this any better?  Even as I'm writing this, it is not helping me to cope like I thought it would.  I'm trying not to slide down the slippery slope into a full blown panic/crying attack.

What I do know is that this relationship has never been easy and it probably never will be.  I also know that our relationship with Ash has been suffering and I don't know what we can do.  I know that we've seen her four times in the past year and this is the third summer she's not staying with us, as outlined in the parenting agreement.  I'm not even sure what can make this situation worse and I keep reminding myself that I don't even KNOW that this is a bad thing.  Melissa didn't sound mad when she called, but she NEVER calls to talk to Dan, specifically.

I have been praying about this situation for months.  I have a great new friend who understands, offered to car pool to western Kansas if we can coordinate visits and gave me the info for a lawyer who I can talk to for cheap.  These things should all make me feel more secure than I have in the past, but my neurosis is winning. . . .

I hoped to come to some calming, rational conclusion.  Something that would logically show me that I can relax at least long enough to let Dan talk to Melissa before I worry.  Something I could share to encourage other folks who know, all too well, exactly how this feels.

I will now begin with my distraction therapy (tv, games, cheesy romance novel) in order to avoid following this line of reasoning to the point that I convince myself that we'll never see Ash again.

I know the problem here is with me, not Melissa.  I know that we'll find out whatever is going on and deal with it and get through it.  I know that I love Ash to infinity and beyond.

My encouragement for the day--You are not alone.  I'm here.  I understand.