193 open door

Long day---class in the morning, and I'm teaching the first year experience class tonight--I won't be done till 8:30. I planned out the day tho. I've eaten an early dinner, which I like doing even less than eating a late one, but my body will no doubt appreciate it. The most important thing though by far is that I've opened the door of communication with my sister Lisa. She is a wonderful person, but I've avoided talking about anything deep for YEARS because of guilt over the many things I've left undone and also fear both of her reactions and all the awful things I would hear about my family. True or not these revelations always kill me to hear. Still, she's worth the effort and it's more than high time that I faced my past and tried doing something about the present rather than just worry pointlessly about it.  Sure enough, both of us have vast amounts of pent up emotions that want to come rushing out. We've only been emailing meaningful things for about 3 days and we're both already on information and emotional overload. But it's been a good thing.  A VERY good thing. And I believe it will be a healing and wonderful thing for both of us.  It's like lancing a boil--all sorts of gross things come out and then there can be healing.  The reason I mention it here is that I'll bet that wading through some of these emotional burdens has got to result in some weight loss. That's not why I reached out of course, but I've long known that being overweight was much more about emotion than it ever was about food.  I hope both of us will soon be free-er and happier than we've been before.

192 on a whim

Well! Last night's dinner plans went straight out the window. I was lonely for Catherine all day and she wasn't texting either. It was a beautiful fall day, the car just had a tune-up, I wasn't really needed at RS--so I decided on the spur of the moment to drive out to Provo and take Catherine out to dinner. Unfortunatley we found what has to be the most medicre Thai food in the state. Disappointing--but the company was first rate! Afterwards we went to the creamery where I had a single scoop of mint brownie fudge ice-cream. I have no idea where the points were last night. The ice-cream was at least 10 and the dinner would either be excellent or very poor depending on how much oil they cooked stuff in.  Exercise-wise, I'm still down and out, but getting better. I went to the physical therapist today ($35!!!), and he said I should be good for the 1/2 marathon!!  I'll be under prepared, but I'm still hoping that less weight and better shoes will compensate.  I'm cleared to walk for now but to not "over do".  I plan to be careful---I have to drive to work tomorrow, but should be able to walk up on Friday. Am on track today---things like cheese curds are still hard--I don't want 2 ounces--I WANT half the bag!!! I ate 2 ounces and really, am just fine.

191 ONE piece

Today I did an AMAZING thing. I had ONE--count it, ONE piece of pizza for lunch. It was comical last night how long it took me to realize that having one piece (as opposed to two or three) was even an option.  We had leftover pizza--I wanted some for lunch. In my mind two pieces is the absolute rock bottom serving that exists--but weight watchers attachs a 10 point value to each slice--ouch! and tonight the RS is feeding me a "light" dinner whatever that means, along with Christmas candy sampling and I knew I needed to save a fair heap of points to deal with that.  I began last night by making a tomato cucumber salad--it turned out  bigger than I expected. I slowly began to wonder if I could tolerate a lunch of just a salad and one slice of pizza. I added a double helping of olives and a little feta cheese. Then ever so slowly--like wheels turning that haven't been used in 50 years the thought slowly began to occur to me that I could take 4 wasa crisps with a little butter and garlic salt and that with the pizza and the big salad would be FAR fewer points than two or three slices of pizza, and might feel like an acceptable lunch. And so it was! Of course I'd still like four or five more slices of pizza--but actually, not really. Lunch felt reasonably plentiful. I'm not hungry--I like that I won't gain weight today, I like looking forward to Christmas candy, and I like the size 16 pants I'm wearing.  I missed this size on the way up--we were in Japan when we were first married--when I left I was a 14 a year later coming home, I was a 20. Talk about depressing! I also like that for breakfast I had two crepes and a banana with chocolate peanut butter. I seem to be having a sweet tooth lately--it's nice to indulge it. I love light hot chocolate for 25 cal with ff whipped cream.

I'm still not up to my regular walking--but last night I did take a 1/2 hour walk that started off slowly and carefully, but by the end I was up to regular speed with no pain. I'm very pleased. It's been less than a week and I almost feel back to normal--the only problem is going down stairs. This makes me nervous for the marathon that starts with a steep downhill for 5 miles, but I'll just do all I can do.  I see the physical therapist tomorrow.

190 bad legs

The fast did feel good yesterday, and so does eating right today. I'm slowly, slowly, slowly changing. Yes, I'd like something sweet right now (I mean besides the jawbreaker I'm sucking on), but I'm really ok just saying I'm finished with lunch. I'm making crepes tonight and that will be fine too. It's nice to feel fine with a normal amount of food---not always wanting more.

I wish I could say the same for my poor sister. She's really heavy and went to instacare last night because her legs were so bruised and painful. Pure obesity. She doesn't have blood clots, which was the big fear, only thing to be done is lose weight, exercise and lay off the salt. I'll try and help her all I can, but it's difficult--she refuses to use the computer, refuses to return calls. She's ashamed and feels hopeless in a lot of areas in her life. My Dad has given up. My mom and other sister do nothing but radiate disapproval--this combined with the 100% toxic environment she creates for herself...no wonder she's in despair.

189 Fast

Fasting is a good thing today in every way.  I can think of nothing my whole digestive tract would enjoy more than a few hours off. I'm glad the church has an official fast Sunday. Of course, nothing prevents me from fasting at any time, but being the food-lover that I am, the time to skip food never really comes around. I've learned though this past stomach illness that my addiction is more powerful than simply feeling sick to my stomach. Unless things are pretty terrible, I will ALWAYS want to eat.  I truly feel for those who have even worse addictions than I do. I am 32 pounds overweight--at my all time worst I was 72 pounds overweight.  That's plenty hard enough. I hope someday I really will get my book out and help others travel the road between wherever they are and where they need to be to see success.

Anyway! We had fun in Logan yesterday.  My knee is MUCH better and by mid-afternoon I could almost walk without limping. I did some gentle walking around a few small stores, and in the evening we took a slow walk of about four blocks.  Today I'll increase that a little as well as walk to church. I'll have to be careful. I've stopped taking the prescription anti-inflammatory because it caused unbearable itching all over--these last two days have been AWFUL. I took quite a bit of ibu yesterday, but I don't want to take a bunch on an empty stomach today.

Also, starting today I'll be back tracking on WW. It was kind of pointless to do while I was sick and in Denver, but I've never given up at least a mental tally.

And one more point for the slow road. In French Women Don't get Fat the author talks about the doctor who helped her and others that followed her program. Three pounds in 4 weeks! Nine pounds in 12! The more I see and hear real weight loss stories, the more I'm convinced that this is the about the speed of success.  A little less than a pound a week average. That's a FAR cry from what I've always been taught to believe equals weight loss success. 

188 SLOW is the way to go

     A milestone day!  Today is the day that by blog day exceeds my weight! I realize that this is random, but it still feels good. This is a testiment to the benefits of slow weight-loss---excruciatingly slow in my humble opinion. But it works!!  I mentioned in yesterdays blog that I was up a few pounds--up to 191 to be exact. No surprises there, I REALLY enjoyed the dessert bar and other Denver goodies. I've been home and back on track--not counting, but back to things I normally eat--all of two days and this morning, I'm back to 187! BRAVO!!  The body really does work both ways---I feel as though I sweat and skimp and work and only very reluctantly does my weight do anything but move up.  Well, it's the same when I indulge--apparently my body took my Denver indescrestions and went "What the heck is all this?" and did whatever it took to put my weight back to what it thinks it is--which is happily 187. 
     The insurance--another hurrah for the PEHP people, is working with me too. I emailed my person there and asked what I should do as the evil doctor's scales claim I did not meet my goal for the Aug/Sept block. No prob. I have a 30 day extension to get the doc scales to register 187--which means my scales here need to say 185. Hopefully that won't be a problem. I wish I could do some walking today---I guess I'll be doing a little bit of limping around. We're driving up to Logan to see the leaves and visit the cheese factory. Love cheese curds--but I will go easy on them---or at least have a very light lunch.  I'm HOPING my stomach virus has finally worked itself out. When I woke up today Dave had made bacon and eggs and that actually sounded good, so I ate breakfast for the first time in about two weeks because I wanted to not because I felt I had to.
     And lastly, a fun little happy thing. When I was at the airport checking in, I looked at my drivers license and saw that I actually weigh less than what it says on the license.  Is that even legal?  It feels great, because naturally, I lied about my weight at the time.

187 a dream

Back from Denver and back to blogging. It was a rough trip. My stomach is still out of sorts--which helped a lot as far as overspending and not going completely bananas with the food. Even still, I "overcame" the off stomach enough to put away some really wonderful very high cal food. Artichoke dip at Old Chicago, the most amazing dessert buffet I've ever seen at the hotel, an italian sandwich at a fancy restaurant, key lime pie at Bubba gump shrimp (wasn't feeling well, so the pie WAS dinner), and a full meal at the Cheesecake factory (feeling better then) with the most amazing chocolate coconut cheesecake. Not surprisingly, I'm up a few pounds at the moment.  In addition to the dicey stomach, my knee went out on the last day! I mean really went out--one minute I was fine, the next I couldn't walk. I went to the Dr. yesterday and I have "femoral patella syndrome"--basically loose knee caps. The right knee cap slipped its groove and that really hurts! The treatment is simple--wear a brace and take anti-inflammatories.  It already feels much better and I'm still holding out hope that I can do the 1/2 marathon. The thing I'm worried about is that I can't walk right now and I didn't walk anywhere near as much as normal during the conference--though the Denver conference center is the biggest thing I've ever seen--and we all did get some good walking in just going from session to session. It's frustrating now not to be able to walk--I WANT to walk and do just dance, I'm going nuts just sitting and sitting and sitting. Besides, walking helps my stomach.  But there's not much I can do except let my body heal and do the best I can.

I want to mention an interesting and vivid dream I had just before we left. In my dream I was talking to my cat, Tigger. It didn't look like Tigger in the dream, but that's who it was. Tigger had done something so terrible and even evil (though I couldn't remember in my dream what awful thing he'd done) that he could no longer stay in the house. I was explaining to him that he couldn't stay and I felt so sad. The dream Tigger was a very mean looking cat (the real one is the most lovable snuggly cat you can imagine). I put him out. It was a pretty winter day and he settled down in the yard in plain sight of the window, just as he might on any day, I wondered if he understood that he couldn't come back. I woke up then feeling sad.  When I shared the dream with Dave he asked me what awful thing he'd done? I laughed because I knew the dream didn't represent him. I wonder if it represents my weight problem? If it does, I think the dream is a really good sign--free for all eating represents love and comfort--just like Tigger. It hurts to say farewell to something that's been such a staple for the way I've always lived my life. But hopefully, that dream tells me that I'm doing exactly that.  Sure, overeating FEELS great, but it isn't my friend. It has only ever harmed me. Overeating pretends to fix everything or to make everything more fun, but it steals my life on every level. Overeating has betrayed me and cannot be forgiven. 

However, having said that--I'm so glad that food isn't banished from my life! Food IS my friend. Food gives me life and it can be very good indeed. I'm not sure everything I ate in Denver was justified, but oddly, the only thing I really regret is that second half of the Italian sandwich. I was full--more than full in fact, but I still ate it. That's a mistake. Everything else was genuinely special and, thanks mostly to my weak stomach, I left food on the plate at every meal.  The other good thing I did in Denver was to download French Women don't get Fat onto my Nook.  There's a book that's on the right track! She advocates a very gentle approach--and a much more conscious attitude toward food than we have in America--not conscious as in I know all the calories etc in every bite, but conscious about how great the food is--and IS it great? And if it isn't, what could I find that would be better? It's the difference between a mediocre piece of store cheese, and a piece of that terrific Irish cheese I found.  I think I still need WW to hold my hand, because unlike the French Women, I'm not very good at stopping at one piece of anything. But it's great to read a book that actually makes portion control sound desireable and appealing! Apparently the French think it's weird to see a plate full of food. Who would want to eat that? Or a meal that's just one thing--like a plate of spaghetti.  I've been thinking about the things I love--I'm going to incorporate more of them in my life--weirdly, most of it isn't American--really good bread, really good cheese, really good chocolate, feta cheese, olives, naan, live yogurt, kabobs, produce in season. I will put these into WW and keep re-reading the French book to teach me that less really is SO much more.