Here We Are Again

So, after almost a year of doing whatever the hell I wanted, not really eating healthy or exercising, here I am again. Except now it's not so much because I want to, but because I have to. I found out at the end of last year that I have type 2 diabetes. Yay, me. After doing some research, I have a feeling my sudden diagnosis likely has to do with a lovely hormonal disorder I have called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. To get my diabetes under control as well as getting my hormones straightened out I'm having to seriously change my lifestyle. And the more I read about the changes I need to make, the more I want to rail against it all. I love food, more specifically I love carbs like bread and pasta, and I am seriously struggling with coming to terms with what I can and can't have. I sometimes have a tendency to focus on the negative so right now I'm trying not to focus on the limitations I'm going to face. Not that that is exactly easy though.

Fear Being In The Same Place

I abandoned this blog almost a year ago because I was so frustrated and discouraged. If you read my last post in August of last year, then you know that I was planning on setting up a doctor's appointment to determine if I had polycystic ovary syndrome. After some blood work and testing the answer was yes, I do have PCOS. I was given a prescription for birth control pills and that was it. I've been on them for almost a year now and the only difference I've personally noticed is that I'm not longer losing my hair which is growing back to both my relief and annoyance. Perpetually frizzy looking hair just sucks and is a pain to deal with.

Sucker Punch

So I realize it's been over a month since I updated this blog. I've been dealing with a lot personal and medical issues recently in regards to my weight loss and I just wasn't ready to share. Losing the weight has been much harder than I anticipated. I figured once I changed my diet and really started working out, the weight would really start to drop, at least initially just because I have so much to lose. But that's not what happened. I dropped just below 300 lbs once and then a week or two later, I bopped back up to just over 300 and that's where I've stayed. It's been massively frustrating because nothing I do differently seems to make any difference. So I've gotten very discouraged and I've started struggling with the depression again.

In addition to the weight loss issues, a month or two back I started noticing that I was losing a lot more hair than was normal when I took a shower or brushed my hair. Instead of just some strands here and there, when I ran my fingers through my hair, I was getting clumps. And my hair just felt thinner. I've always had very thick hair but suddenly it wasn't anymore. I thought maybe it was because I'd been dying my hair about every two months for almost a year to maintain the red hair that I loved.  So I returned to my natural brunette hair color and worked at really conditioning my hair, hoping that would help. It didn't. When I went to get my hair cut a few weeks ago by mom's cousin, she confirmed that my hair was thinning and told me I should get some blood work done because maybe it was a thyroid issue.

After my hair cut, I went back out to my car and just for the heck of it did a google search on causes of hair loss with women. One of the first results that came up was by WebMD listing hair loss as a symptom of polycystic ovary syndrome. I had a light bulb go off then. My mom had sent me a text months back telling me I should look into it as she thought I might have it, but I more or less ignored the issue. Now, though, looking at all the different symptoms, I realized that I was positive for every single one of them: menstrual problems (up until a month ago, I hadn't had a period in at least five years and then I suddenly started again for some reason), hair loss, acne and oily skin, obesity, depression and/or mood swings, difficulty sleeping, and fertility problems. The last one was the only one I couldn't confirm simply because I've never tried to get pregnant.

Seize the Day

"Do it, it's not too late. You can totally make it."
"No, you're stronger than this. Prove it to yourself."
"Another slip up is not going to make that much of a difference. You know you want it."
"But you don't need it. You're not hungry in the least. You can resist this."
That's the dialogue that was running through my head tonight as I sat in my car in the Popejoy parking structure trying to merge into a never ending line of cars. I'd just seen the musical Newsies which I'd been wanting to see for several years now and had been totally blown away by it. It wasn't just good, it was amazing. And watching it, I was reminded of how much I'd wanted to be an actress, to be on stage like that. But I can't sing, I can't dance, and I'm a mediocre actress at best. And if those didn't knock me out of the running, my weight certainly did. There's not any room for overweight actresses unless you're also a comedian for the most part, which I certainly am not.

So walking out to my car, I felt exhilarated and on cloud nine but I also felt depressed. Watching the show, I couldn't help but thinking how amazing it must be to be up on that stage. I haven't acted in over two years and I really miss it, but I don't see the point in auditioning when I know I won't get a part. My weight just automatically rules me out. Climbing into my car, I just started to cry. I just felt overwhelmed. I don't know where the emotion came from, but suddenly there it was and I started thinking about how much I loved to act. The practical side of me immediately popped up to remind me that I gave up my dream of becoming an actress and I was now in school to become a vet tech, a stable, solid career choice. The thing is, I'm not into science and math and all that, I just love animals. I've always leaned towards the more creative side of things, writing, drawing, singing, dancing, etc., none of which I'm particularly good at, but I enjoy nonetheless. But while I might not enjoy science and math as much, I've done very well in my classes. And did I mention that I have way more chance of success with this career?

Balance Is Key

Sorry for the long delay in updating, it's been a crazy, what, week and a half, almost two weeks? Jeez, I need to get better at setting aside time to blog. In any case, I'm still alive and I'm still working to get healthier. The biggest thing I've been striving for since I last posted is balance; working to be healthy, but also not feel like I'm depriving myself. I found out the hard way on Memorial Day that working out is great, but I need to be careful to pace myself. I joined an hour and fifteen minute group workout that morning that turned out to be very high intensity. I was exhausted after it was done, but my trainer happened to catch me as I was leaving and asked if I wanted to do our session then rather than having to come back later that afternoon. Despite feeling tired from the workout I'd just completed, I said sure because not having to drive back and forth was appealing, despite the fact I live a grand total of five minutes away from the gym. We did a fairly easy session but I went home feeling shaky and totally drained, laid down, and then promptly had to make a run for the bathroom to throw up. I was miserable. I felt like crap for the rest of the day and worst of all I didn't really feel like going to gym for the rest of that week.

The fact that I'm actually enjoying working out is awesome, but I have to be careful to not overdo it and make myself sick and discourage myself. With the heat, it takes a huge effort to get myself out the door, I don't need any other reasons to make me second guess going to the gym. I did still make it to the gym a couple times last week, but definitely not every day. And it wasn't all just lack of energy that made me choose not to go, I was really struggling with the heat and with headaches and not feeling great and I really didn't want to make myself feel worse since I do have work and classes to focus on.

She Became A Butterfly...

Okay so maybe I'm not at the point where I could be considered a butterfly, but I'm working my way there.  I wanted to share this quote because I happened to come across it looking for another quote and I just really love it because I find it, personally, very relatable.  I feel like I've gone through a lot of darkness with my depression and eating disorders and all the other "fun" stuff life has thrown at me and I feel like I'm finally coming out of that darkness.  I just thought it was a really beautiful quote.

So one thing I wanted to mention really quickly that I realized I really didn't get into in my last post was my eating disorders.  People generally figure that those who are overweight are overweight because they're pigs and eat too much.  In my case, that's true because I have a binge eating disorder.  Basically what it means is that I overeat a lot even when I'm not hungry and I feel like absolute crap afterward, both physically and emotionally.  It was because of this that I also started purging.  While that hasn't been as big an issue for me as the binge eating, it's still really unhealthy.  But I've been doing way better with it since I started eating more regular meals which I think is awesome.  I haven't purged in at least a couple months and when I have the urge to eat, I'm going to shoot to grab something healthy.

I had that issue last night.  My best friend and I went out to dinner and had a good sized dinner plus dessert, but after he left, I still wanted to eat something.  I honestly was not hungry at all, but I wanted food.  So I had some grapes which turned out to be rather sour and pretty much put me off food for the rest of the night.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but it worked and I was pleased that I hadn't either gone out and picked something up or rummaged through the house for something unhealthy.

The hardest part with the food is just battling the bad habits I've built up over the years.  I'll be driving around and see a Dion's and think, Oooh, a pizza sounds amazing right now!  Or I'll pass a Dairy Queen and think of how good a Blizzard sounds.  And then I try to rationalize with myself that, oh, I haven't had thus and such in several weeks and now I can't have it so I should get it as a last meal, kind of thing.  I've been really struggling with that, but so far I've only had one slip up.  More on that in a bit.  It's a daily battle, but I'm finding that overall I'm doing pretty well.

Getting Back to the Journey

So I realize it's been over a month since I last blogged and for that I would like to apologize.  I promise though it was not for lack of trying.  I started a new job a little over a month ago and I've been working full-time, but instead of sitting down all the time like my last job, I was on my feet a lot more which as I had mentioned, really affected my feet and I was dealing with a lot of pain from them.  The other side effect, being absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, was a result of a combination of running around a lot more than I was used to and trying to learn a lot of stuff in a short amount of time.  So I would get home from work, eat, feed my dogs and cats, and pretty much crash.  I did try to blog a few times and inevitably woke up several hours later with my cheek pressed against the keyboard and a long string of letters and numbers filling my screen.  So to an extent, I guess I gave up.  So where am I now?  Well, I haven't lost a ton of weight, a little under 10 lbs actually.  I've been quite disappointed with myself for not doing as well as I would like.  Part of the problem is that I went really hard at it in the beginning and I think I basically burned myself out.  So to an extent, I'm starting over, but at a slower pace.  Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint.

Time to Decide

 Today was a day of decisions.  When I woke up this morning, I felt completely sick to my stomach.  I felt awful.  The reason?  Well, last night after going to a play with a couple friends, I ended up going to a local pizza place and getting dinner and completely overeating.  It wasn't a binge, I was just hungry and tired and wasn't really thinking straight.  Looking at that decision by the light of a new day, I was furious with myself.  Yesterday wasn't one of my better days.  I woke up a bit later than I meant to and then suddenly remembered that I needed to gas up my car, so I shoveled down a leftover waffle with some watermelon and ran out the door.  It was hardly a satisfying breakfast so I picked up a bag of mixed nuts at the gas station.  I WAS proud of the fact that I chose the nuts over all the unhealthy junk food you normally find at gas stations.  I figured the nuts were a bit healthier and they would help keep me from getting too hungry before my lunch.  For lunch I had my leftover fajitas which tasted fantastic and filled me up and helped to energize me a bit too.

But by the time I got off work, I was exhausted.  I was still struggling with getting to sleep at night so I hadn't gotten near the amount of sleep I really needed.  When I got home, I was rushing around trying to get changed, feed my dogs, feed my cats, and generally just get some of the things that needed to get done done before heading to the play.  When I started looking at something to have for dinner, I found that we didn't seem to have a ton of leftovers and I would have to fix something.  I wasn't feeling terribly hungry and since I didn't really have time to fix anything if I didn't want to be late, I decided to skip dinner.  Worst decision ever.  The play was a lot of fun as was getting to chat with my friends afterwards.  It was just after nine when I started heading for home.  I was so tired, but I was also very hungry by this time.  I had no energy to fix anything at home and that's when I thought about the pizza place that wasn't too far away.  So I headed over there and ordered way too much for one person to eat, let alone someone who's trying to eat healthy, and ate it all.  Like I said, I wasn't bingeing, I was just hungry and I really overate.  When I got home, I completely crashed, but my stomach started bothering me during the night and woke me up a few times.

And like I said, this morning I was severely pissed off with myself.  I had been doing so well and then I blew it.  And what really ticked me off was that it had so NOT been worth it.  I couldn't remember what it tasted like, nothing.  I just knew I had eaten a ton of food that I didn't need and I felt like crap.  At that point I had a decision to make.  Generally when something like that has happened to me, I throw my hands up in the air and give up.  So this morning I had to decide if I was going to let one bad day make me give up.  I'm sorry to say that at that point, I wasn't sure.  I was frustrated, I was still tired and I had a long day ahead of me.

Food, Family, Success!

So before I get into what happened with my day, I wanted to talk about a few things.  First of all, I decided to check how far I had walked yesterday and how long it had taken me.  I figured I had walked maybe a mile and it had taken probably about thirty minutes.  When I checked I discovered that I had actually walked almost TWO miles in about thirty minutes!  I was stoked!  I had no idea it was quite that far, so I felt even more accomplished.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is just a little bit about my relationship with food and how that contributed to where I'm at now.  Growing up I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on my dad's side.  My grandmother did not like to cook, but she would cook for me because I'm her only granddaughter.  The problem was that since she didn't like to cook, she would fix a lot of foods mostly out of a box or can and they were very unhealthy and fatty.  If she fixed a vegetable, it was generally smothered in cheese.  My grandparents on my mother's side both liked to cook and it seemed they were under the impression that people who came over to eat were going to starve.  My grandfather is from Italy, my grandmother from Venezuela.  They cooked a lot of Italian food which means a lot of pasta which was positively divine because it was homemade and it was very easy to eat a lot of it.  They fixed healthier meals than my other grandmother in that they usually made a large salad and some other vegetable.  My parents generally cooked slightly healthier food, but it wasn't as much of a priority.  As I mentioned before, I was at a healthy weight as a child so it wasn't such a big deal.

With my family, primarily with me, my mom, and her parents, food is the way we show our family and friends that we love them.  My mom's parents were never very open and expressive about their love.  It just wasn't their way.  They showed their love by fixing amazing food and encouraging us to eat helping after helping.  My mom likes to cook for our family because the time and effort she puts into it shows how much she loves us.  I'm the same.  When my friends come over to my house on Monday nights when I host, I have a tendency to fix something more elaborate and complicated because, as I've also mentioned, I'm not good at communicating and that's how I show them how much I love them and how much their friendship means to me.

Gonna Fly Now

So I planned on posting last night about my first official day of starting to lose weight, but I didn't get home till late and with having to get up early for work the next morning I decided not to, so this might be a little bit of a longer post.  I know my first post was on Sunday, but I actually didn't start until yesterday just because my parents and I already had plans with the family that did not include eating the healthiest of food.  That's not to say that I totally pigged out.  I'm actually really proud of the fact that I think overall I did pretty well.

Yesterday was my first day at my new job which I was really excited about.  I actually got up an hour and a half before I had to leave which means I actually had time for breakfast.  At my last job I never ate breakfast.  I would either wait till lunch or get a burrito from the cafe.  With not knowing what to expect though and wanting to make sure that I didn't start bingeing later on because I was so hungry, I wanted to make sure I started off my day right.  So I had some leftover egg scramble with a bit of guacamole, a single piece of bacon, some watermelon, and a large glass of water.  At work, which I think I'm going to really enjoy, I was standing a lot, something I haven't had to do in almost a year and a half.  I have plantar fasciitis and being on my feet for a long period of time makes it flare up.  Plantar fasciitis is generally described as inflammation of the plantar fascia of the foot which is a band of connective tissue running from the heel to the base of the toes and supports the arch.  So after standing for a few hours, my feet started hurting terribly at which point it was pretty much a matter of just grin and bear it, but it made walking painful and difficult.

I hadn't had time to pack a lunch unfortunately, so I went over to the Dion's nearby and got a Caesar salad.  One of my goals to start easing my way into the weight loss was to stop drinking soda.  It is just so unhealthy and I figured it would make a difference if I started with it.  However, since my stomach was feeling a bit queasy, probably from nerves, I did get a medium sprite because it generally calms down my stomach.  I was a bit frustrated at needing it because I had switched purses and didn't have any kind of medicine whatsoever that might help, but I figured it was a one time thing and it did help my stomach so I was grateful for that.