Category Archives: fears

I’m trying…

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Ive spent the better part of this morning looking through old cookbooks and online for food ideas for next week.  I know I don’t want to settle for the weight I’m at.  I still have LOTS of work to do and I can allow a week of wallowing but then I HAVE to get back to work.  The month of July was really a doozy for me and I think if I can just acknowledge that and move forward then maybe I won’t be lost at sea forever.

On the menu for next week are some of my old favorites from my Dr. Phil diet days…I am going to be making his Refrigerator Applesauce Bran Muffins and his Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry.  The muffins are awesome and you make a whole bunch of batter that can be refrigerated for 3 weeks so you just make a few muffins at a time so that they’re fresh.  They are only 100 calories per muffin and I usually eat two for breakfast for fiber and carbs and then make an egg or something for protein.  The Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry is just your standard asian stir fry dish but one serving is only 176 calories with 21g of protein.  And its delish!  I might share his recipes here when I make them, we’ll see.  If not you can always pick up the cookbook on Amazon.

I also had the chance to talk with my dad last night about ideas for marketing myself so that I can bring in more clients.  This would eliminate the need for a second job and trying to completely overhaul my schedule and care for Preston.  That makes me feel a little bit better.  Having a plan is always calming to me – even if I don’t execute the plan as I wrote it, its more the idea that I have a road map to follow that really helps me feel at peace about my life.  So food plans and work/marketing plans are a good place to start.

The weather in Chicago today is right around 75 degrees.  It is a wonderful break from the heat we’ve had all summer.  The skies are overcast so that isn’t helping my gloomy mood but I know that getting outside, maybe chasing after Preston on his bike, will help lift my spirits and my energy.  I only have one client tonight (down from three scheduled) but I will be home early enough to possibly start working on organizing my living space.  I am going to have to push myself really hard to get to work but I know that having a clean and orderly living space will help me feel calmer on the inside.  Maybe I’ll even go to bed a little bit early tonight so I don’t feel like a zombie tomorrow :)

I am looking forward to a few things in the coming months and focusing on those things are sometimes helpful when I feel so blah…

This weekend Preston and I are heading into the city (a place that always gives me life!) to help my aunt with a few things.  My two amazing friends, Heidi and Liz are going to be hanging with Preston while I work and then we will hopefully all spend some time together. Social and out of the house are my main goals for my weekends and it appears as though I will be accomplishing both :)

Next week Monday Pres and I have his orientation for Pre-K 4 :)  He is attending our parish’s preschool program again this year.  He went two mornings a week last year and really loved it so this year its 3 mornings a week!  I’m hopeful that I can successfully use that time to exercise and meal plan so that I’m not taking any time away from him and both of those things are easier without him.  I also just signed him up for his fall activities – he’s taking a ballet/tap class and a hiphop/jazz class.  He took ballet this summer and dancing seems to be the only thing he wants to do.  I plan on encouraging him to try several different sports and activities so that he can get a real sense of what it is he likes to do but for this fall we are sticking with dance.

I’m also excited about school starting because that means fall and that means cooler temps, raking leaves, jeans, sweaters, apple picking, pumpkin carving and all those fun fall activities.  As far as seasons go, fall is my #1.

Thank you to those of you that left me encouraging comments, even just one comment helps to redirect my focus and remember that I don’t have such a bad deal going on.  It helps me remember that I deserve to fight for what I want even if it feels like I’ve been fighting for a very long time.  I trust that God has a plan for my life and I need to be patient and present for the challenging times as well as the easier/happier times.  I’m trying…

to being strong…

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I’m struggling.

I have been thinking about my blog every day since the last day that I posted something, what was that two weeks ago?!?  I have been struggling, dieting and emotionally and I just want to keep that hidden.  I keep telling myself that when I turn the ship around and feel better and my diet is better then I can write about where I was and how I’m in a better place.  I think that most stories, novels, successful blogs are all about the after moment.  The before and after pictures.  The story of how said person was in a low place but is writing to tell about how they got through it.  How they struggled to find success but they are now being successful.  I guess we as a human race prefer to read stories and blogs and watch movies about triumph and coming through the dark stuff because it keeps us hopeful.  But what about those of us still in the trenches??  I personally feel like I’ve been living in survival mode since roughly, January of 2006.  That’s 6 and a half years!  Throughout that time I’ve had some good times, happy moments etc, but I really feel like I’m just surviving each day, not living and enjoying those days.  Maybe I say that because when you’re in the trenches the lens you have to look at the past through clouds everything so it all looks pretty grey.

I wanted to wait and see when I would feel a little more sunny but I don’t, in fact I feel darker.  I want to write from the dark place, with the goal of not sounding whiny and complainy.  But here it goes:

I feel alone.  And dark.  And tired.  And sad.  And stuck.  And alone.  And alone.  And alone.

My diet has been shit this week.  Its a reflection of the emotional tsunami I’m trying to swim through.  My space is a mess, also a reflection of whats going on inside of me.  My car even smells funny, although, that I do not think is a reflection of my inner turmoil, I think there’s just something stinky going on.  Things with Preston’s dad continue at a standstill.  I haven’t had more than a 2 hour window of time without Pres in 5 weeks.  When I’m not near Preston I am at work, helping other people sort out their darkness.  I do have a few evenings to myself when I am not working and those prove to be even more challenging for me because I sit, alone.  Needless to say, I’d love to have a weekend “off” where I can get on my bike again, where I could sleep in, or visit a friend without planning how Pres will be entertained while I’m visiting.  I would like to consume an alcoholic beverage and enjoy the cooler evening weather with a friend.  I want to feel more human – more like a person who has needs and wants that are just as valid as her clients or her son’s.

I’m so sick of being alone (yes I find saying that funny when I just stated that I’d like a break from mommy duty for a few minutes but I’m talking about something a little different).  I want a partner, a boyfriend, a husband.  I want to be chosen by someone.  I dream about someone proposing to me and saying, “I choose you.  You are the one that I choose above any others.  You are worth choosing.”  I want a best friend that I can laugh with and play with and sleep next to every night.  I want a man in my life that helps me sort out the harder times and celebrates that happy times.  I want someone to watch the olympics with, someone to have inside jokes with, someone to play rock paper scissors with when Preston makes a mess and neither of us want to deal with it.  I want someone to sit with at mass.  I want someone to dream with and cry with and play with.  I don’t want to be alone anymore.  I want someone to be my someone who is a constant in my life, I want that person to choose me, pick me, love me.

Sometimes I tell myself that my desire to have a partner is so strong that it must mean I’m desperate.  I don’t know – I won’t settle, I won’t marry the next guy that comes along if he isn’t right, but I am definitely ready.  At least I think I am.  I just don’t want to do life alone anymore.  It sucks.  It does, it really just sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for my family and my friends.  I love all of them so much – the thing is, they’ve already chosen someone to be their someone.  So I get all those parts of a “someone” piecemeal from all my friends and family members.  I get shoulder to cry on here, concoct ideas over there, dream about winning the lottery over here, and share a Sunday afternoon there.  And I don’t get the best part of anyone, those parts are reserved for their someone or family.

At times I do an ok job convincing myself that the deal I’ve got going isn’t so bad.  I have awesome friends and an amazing family.  I get my needs met, even though its piecemeal, I don’t go completely without.  I am aware I have it better than some, many even.  Am I selfish for wanting more?  For wanting to feel validated and worthy because someone chooses me, and just me?

My best friend, Katie, wants me to put myself out there and start dating – I’ve been single for a year now.  I have my moments where that sounds exciting to me, but it mostly just feels like a meat market, and my feelings about my body trump my desire to put myself out there and risk being rejected.  All the things Chris used to say about my weight and how my beauty was measured by my size replay over and over in my mind and I can’t possibly imagine being viewed as beautiful at this weight.  I think, why would I go speed dating, or to some mixer, only to stand awkwardly by myself and not be approached by a single guy?  Why would I continue trying internet dating (ugh I hate it) when its all based so much off of the pictures that you post to attract someone to you.  I don’t even think I’m that interesting anymore – all of my hobbies, interests, and knowledge have been swallowed up by sorting out which dance classes to sign Pres up for, what Pres needs to know before preschool starts in three weeks, and what do my clients need from me this week?  Another person couldn’t possibly find any of that interesting.  All of these self-destructive thoughts don’t help my case at all, but I’ve got quite the crowd in my mind telling me these things and its hard to quiet it all down enough to risk putting myself out there.  :(

I have invested several hours this week looking online for a second job.  I need to find a way to bring more money in, without sending most of it out to childcare for Preston.  I want to work more, I want to make more money, but I want to be with Preston.  I don’t want to miss out on these precious years that he actually likes me.  I know that the reality of single parenthood is generally working two or even three jobs to pay the bills and make ends meet and I get so angry and upset that, that is my reality.  This is nowhere near what I wanted my life to be like.  I never would have laid out this path as the one to take.  Maybe that’s true of most peoples lives and you just have to work with where you are.  I know this.  I help people realize this and work to accept these things about life for a living!!  I am just really struggling with it for myself.  I don’t want my life to be like this but I can’t figure out what move to make in order to change it.  With every move I think about taking it means giving up something else that I don’t want to sacrifice.

I know a man (boyfriend/husband) won’t fix this.  I know having a second job won’t fix this. I know Preston’s dad being completely amicable and flexible won’t fix this.  Only I can decide to feel better about what my life is at the present moment.  I’m just really struggling with that.  I’m really struggling to cheerlead myself through this life.  I’m really struggling to find strength and perseverance through this time, through these years and years of uphill battle, where is the top?  When do I summit this beast of a mountain?  How much further and harder can I push?  Everyday I end my day praying to God that something gives because I simply don’t have anymore fight in me – and then everyday I wake up able to make it through one. more. day.  My definition of strength has always been that if you keep waking up every day and keep making it through each day then you are being strong, even if you feel weak the whole time.  Here’s to being strong…

Avoidance with a capital A!

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Ok I have been majorly avoiding my commitment to blogging regularly.  I’m sorry.  The past few weeks or even month have been challenging to say the least.  From birthday parties to traveling and personal drama I am ready for things to feel a little more consistent and calmer.  I think I am finally getting back to that :)

So where to begin??  This past week was bad on my diet.  I’m up 3lbs – its mostly water retention etc but I was definitely lazy last week (only 1 workout!) and ate poorly.  I wouldn’t say that I was binging but I was making the unhealthier choices instead of the healthier ones.  I’m ashamed to have put some weight back on but I’m back on the horse and back at it.  My hope is that this week I”ll be back to where I was two weeks ago and then I can keep losing.  It feels so good to look in the mirror and feel thinner.  It also feels good to shrink out of my clothes and I have some great winter clothes that if I stay focused will fit quite nicely this fall/winter.

Some of my reasons for not being strict with myself were just that I started to have cravings for bad stuff.  I think that the major reason the cravings began were because I’ve been having some personal drama with Preston’s dad.  I’m not going to get into details here because I don’t think that’s appropriate but it has had been really overwhelmed and stressed out for the past month or so.  I want so badly to not allow my eating/diet to be effected by stress but its what I know.  I eat to fill the empty/alone feeling when stuff is stressing me out!  No wonder I gained so much weight during grad school!!  Anyway, I am trying very hard to get myself back on track.  In the past messing up for a week would mean I would begin to believe that I wasn’t capable of losing weight and that I was failing.  I have tried to reorient my thinking so that I recognize the setback but don’t let it mean anything more than that.  Yesterday was the first “good” day start to finish.  I ate really well and did an hour of cardio which felt good and tiring.  I also got a full nights sleep that helped tremendously.  I noticed that when I’m making bad choices my water intake goes down a ton, so I have made a point to increase my water consumption again – it helps soooo much with cravings.

Aside from the diet/food issues and the drama with the baby daddy life has been alright.  Preston and I spent the weekend with my aunt two weekends ago and enjoyed pool time, eating out, a visit to Navy Pier and a fun production of Beauty and the Beast.  Preston was fascinated by the costumes and music of the show.  Preston is truly a dramatic and theatrical person at heart and so its really fun to take him to shows.  I like to watch him, watching the show, even though he doesn’t have the words to explain the pleasure he gets from it you can see it on his face and it just makes me so happy.  Last weekend we headed down to central Illinois where my best friend Katie lives.  Her daughter Lorelei (who happens to be my god-daughter) is 6 months younger than Preston and they have such a great time playing together while Katie and I enjoy spending grown up time together.  It was a nice quick trip.

Our summer has really been pretty fun.  Preston loves his ballet class.  We try to hit up the library regularly and the pool.  He doesn’t nap anymore – hasn’t in over a year – so we make the most of our day having fun and playing and then he’s asleep around 6:30pm.  That’s the best part of no naps, early bedtime and time to relax or go to work :)

I have been feeling this desire to reconnect or connect with people to expand my social network.  I have lots of friends, but they are mostly spread out and not easily accessible in person.  I also think that as you get older your circle of friends just keeps shrinking.  But in an effort to combat my loneliness I have decided I’d like more friends in the area.  So even though I haven’t really taken any major strides to meet a bunch of new people its something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Ok this post is getting totally random.  I am sorry for my absence and avoidance for so long.  I’m ready to get back to blogging regularly and sharing my success as well as my slower less productive weeks.

Sometimes its a hard conversation.

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Yesterday I had a lengthy conversation with Preston about why he doesn’t live with his Mom AND Dad.  Over the past few months he has begun asking little questions here and there, but yesterday was the first time he really was looking for answers.  We were talking about a friend of mine who recently had a baby and how that baby lives with both her mommy and daddy.  Preston asked something about why he doesn’t have that kind of family (this stuff tugs on my heart strings so bad!).  I told him that families come in all different ways – some kids live with a mom and dad, some with one parent and their grandparents, some are adopted because their birth mom and dad can’t take care of them, some have two mommies and no daddy, etc and I explained he just has a different kind of family than the baby we were talking about.  He seemed ok with that explanation and was quiet for a minute.

“Mommy maybe you should marry Daddy and then I can have that kind of family.”  Ugh!  How do I avoid that?  I tried to tell him that his mom and dad used to live together and decided that they really like being just friends and not married.  He continued with his questioning, “Ok but are you going to get married to someone?” I only pray about it daily!!!!!  “Yes, Preston, hopefully someday I will get married.”  He thought a minute about this and then said “When you get married I can have a brother.  I don’t want a sister anymore, I want a brother to play with.  Ok Mom?  Can I have that?” While this whole conversation was happening my heart was just melting for my little boy who has such a different reality than I did at his age in terms of his family structure and it makes me sad for him – mostly because it’s so foreign to me.  I tried to explain to him that I can’t guarantee a sibling for him someday but I told him that someday he can definitely have a dog, a boy dog :)  Preston was perfectly satisfied by the idea of having a dog “brother”.  He went on to talk about what color dog he wants (purple) and what he might name him.

I’ve always tried to be very honest with Preston.  Whatever the topic is I try to age appropriately answer Preston’s questions about life.  Even the ones that lead down the road to sex ed (don’t worry he’s not asking specific questions yet, but I plan to be very straightforward about that stuff).  In my opinion talking about things honestly now will make things clearer in the future and may hopefully encourage him be more willing to talk to me in the future.  When it comes to explaining why Preston lives with his Mom, Nana, and Pops most of the time and his Dad every other weekend I continue to be very open about the facts and why things are the way they are, keeping in mind he is just a child.  I don’t know if this is the best route, but it feels right for us.  His dad hasn’t really weighed in on how he’d prefer these things were handled so I’m just doing it my way.  My biggest fear is that when Preston grows older he will ask why I chose to have him when his father and me were not married and broke up so shortly after he was born.  In his questions about his family structure now, he dances around this question with only the understanding of a small child so I have told him that his mom and dad wanted him so much and God blessed us with him even though we wanted to just be friends.  I know its a bit fluffy and its not totally straightforward but it is true that I wanted to be a mom more than anything ever since I was a young girl, I always wanted a little boy, and Preston has influenced my life in a direction I would not have taken had I not gotten pregnant so I do believe God divinely intervened in Preston’s conception (as I believe he does in all conception – but that’s not what I’m talking about now).  Anyway – such a challenging topic to broach with him but I’m hopeful that he will be able to sort out the logistics of his family structure and the fact that he is very much loved and very much cherished by many people.

He really is such a joy!  Thanks for listening to my rant, as a reward I will end this post with a video of Pres singing one of his favorite Disney songs :)

…You are not the Biggest Loser

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This morning I opened up my email and found this waiting for me…

Just a couple of weeks/months ago I signed up at NBC.com to get info on when they were casting for the next season.  Looks like its coming up at the end of this month.  And the Chicago location is barely a stones throw away from my house!  But as soon as I opened this email a wide smirk passed across my face.  I don’t need this information.  I’m doing this on my own.

After watching season after season of this show (the show started around the time I was losing weight – 2005/6) I began to dream about being a contestant.  I am fully aware that the way they do things is a bit controversial but I wanted the results.  I held myself back from auditioning for the past three years because I’m a single mom and couldn’t fathom being away from Preston and/or figuring out the childcare situation.  I always wonder how contestants are able to just take a leave of absence from life and most have a spouse taking care of their children and jobs that allow them to do something like this – or at least I assume.  I however don’t know anyone that would be able or willing to sign up for up to 4 months of 24/7 childcare of Pres and I only get paid when I work and if I stopped working I’d have to rebuild my caseload and so it just hasn’t ever felt totally right for me.

This year I thought: If I don’t lose the weight really soon I continue to run the risk of shortening my life and if I die how would all those logistics get figured out with someone having to raise my son etc.  I decided that this year I would audition so that maybe if I were picked I could get out of the danger zone and live a long life for Preston.  I thought if its in God’s divine plan for me to lose the weight and do it by being on the show I’ll get a spot and somehow I’ll figure out the childcare/no income thing.  I mean I somehow managed to get through graduate school with a toddler!

And now here I am, one month into making some drastic changes for my life and feeling good about where I am ALL ON MY OWN (well sans show at least).  Receiving that email reminded me that the plans we make for ourselves are not often the way the plans play out.  It motivated me to keep on trucking.  The people who wait in line and audition for the show are not where I am.  They are where I felt I was when I signed up to receive the email.  I feel blessed and excited that I can delete that email and not worry about logistics of child care, just logistics of feeding myself the right fuel and getting my workouts in.  It reminds me I’ve come a long way mentally in the weeks/months since I signed up for that email, and that will help me keep on, keeping on.  :)

Have you ever considered auditioning for Biggest Loser?  Have you ever actually auditioned and gone through that process – I’m always curious about the behind the scenes stuff.

Facing My Fears

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“Whatever it is we’re afraid of, one thing holds true: that by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we’re carrying around a giant tumor.” – Meredith Grey (or her writers)

 Just watch the first 2 minutes and 30 seconds of the clip if you’ve never seen this episode.  The sound is really quiet but its the best I could find.

I’m not sure what made me think of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy earlier today yesterday but it happened and it inspired me to write about it.  If you aren’t a Grey’s fan or haven’t seen this episode this woman comes in with a massive tumor on her abdomen.  She hasn’t left her house in a year because of it.  At one point in the episode George O’Malley asks her why she let it grow so big and the woman explains that she’s always feared the hospital so she put off going to the doctor.  She only decided to seek medical attention when it became unavoidable.

The whole episode is basically about why we put things off and that it is because of fear that we don’t do things.  When I think about weight loss, dieting, trying to change myself, etc I can completely relate to this idea.  Before I lost 100lbs the first time I was afraid of the unknown, and feared all the work I would have to put into losing the weight.  I was also afraid of failing.  But that first time was mostly me forcing myself to stop being lazy.  This time around has been a different ball of wax.  In fact the past 7 years I think I’ve been like this woman, growing a “tumor” (the weight) and being so afraid of dealing with it that I simply avoided it until I couldn’t anymore.

Someone might say a tumor grows out of human control, and I was the one in control of the weight growing.  The thing is throughout the past 7 years a lot of it felt out of control for me.  I recall times of trying to diet and then on Friday after work feeling lonely or let down or some other negative emotion and I would go find food on auto pilot – literally the decision and execution of finding junk food would happen so quickly I only felt the guilt of breaking my diet after the food was ordered or was sitting in my car on the way home.  Often times I would get a bag of chips, or cookies, or some other treat and plan to eat some of it in moderation and save the rest of it, but when I would try to put it away it would sit there calling my name, taunting me until I picked the bag back up and consumed the rest of whatever it was until I felt sick.  There are a variety of foods that I have sworn to God I would never touch again if he would just make the sick, I totally overate, feeling go away.  In those times I was just too afraid to face the bad feelings so I soothed myself with food.

Other times in the past 7 years I have been stuck in this cycle because of the stream of thoughts I have running about myself as a result of trying to make losing weight about someone else.  The woman in the Grey’s episode had witnessed several family members enter the hospital and died while there, so she believed that if she went to the hospital the same would be true for her.  And unfortunately it was true – she waited too long and died on the operating table.  After dating Chris I believed that even being thinner didn’t make me worth loving.  I believed that he proved that to me by not loving me and letting me go when I was trying so hard to be exactly what he wanted.  He showed me that I had to be 135lbs and maintain that to be lovable or else I wasn’t.  I struggled to believe that at 250lbs if I was laughing and having a good time with people that I was as worthy and lovable as my friends who were at least 100lbs less than me.  I believed these things because I had experienced them.  At one of my lower weights I recall Chris asking me how I ever thought I was pretty when I was at my heaviest, because I used to say I felt pretty when going out with friends or something.  I was at a loss for how to answer it because I did feel pretty.  Probably because I was only focused on my face and I like my face.  And maybe I felt pretty relative to my size.  But, regardless of how I felt pretty at the time, the fact that he asked me that sent the message that I clearly was not pretty then and I shouldn’t have thought that way about myself.  So when I put the weight back on it was tremendously  hard to have “pretty days”.  I also started to interact with the world as if these things I believed about myself were true.   Like the way the doctors react to the woman with the tumor; I believed all thin people talked about me and judged me like that every second of every day.  I was unlovable if I was fat.  I was not funny and enjoyable being overweight.  That “pretty days” were only possible for thin people.  And the world started to react to me that way.  Not that people were more mean or insulting, but the world just didn’t care for me the way it felt in 2005 when I was thinner.  Likely this was all a result of perception on my part.  The story I told myself about my self worth felt true because I looked for validation of it in everything.

I would have moments of clarity where I could convince myself those things weren’t true, that I was worth fighting for, so I would fight.  I would start a diet and within a week or two something would happen that lined up with my bad perception of myself and I would quit. I became less willing to try over time.  I became resentful and frustrated and depressed.  I still struggle with this.  My story about my self worth that was influenced by Chris and adapted and developed by me has a way of creeping up on me.  Sometimes I notice something I don’t like about myself in the mirror and I obsess about it for some time.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and feel pretty and the voice inside of me tries to remind me that fat girls don’t get “pretty days”.  I have to tell myself to shut up – quiet down and go away! That’s not true!!  When I say something and everyone in the room doesn’t drop everything and come listen to every word coming out of my mouth it is not because I am overweight it is because they’re busy, or preoccupied, or something else – but its not about me.

I’m still at a point where my weight loss isn’t noticeable to anyone but myself and I fear something coming along and knocking me off this ride and failing.  And I initially feel comfort in thinking that people then wouldn’t know I failed, that I hadn’t done what I set out to do and it would be fine.  I could just stay overweight and no one would know I want something different for myself.  But then I remember that I’m writing this blog.  That I’ve told everyone I know that I’m making this effort, that quitting now would mean that I have to own it and tell people.  And that is not something I want to do.  And ultimately giving up is not something I want to do either.

The Grey’s Anatomy episode ends with Meredith saying, “We have to make our own mistakes.  We have to learn our own lessons.  We have to sweep todays possibility under tomorrows rug until we can’t anymore.  Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant.  That knowing is better than wondering.  That waking is better than sleeping.  And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.”

The pain of being so overweight has far exceeded the pain of facing my weight and self worth issues.  It has been time to face all of this for a long time.  And I am left with a giant tumor – the pain, the regret, the missed opportunities and experiences.  But I won’t live in fear anymore.  I will continue to try.  Every day.  I don’t want to wonder anymore about who Megan is as a healthier and happier person.  I don’t want to long for her anymore.  I want to work my ass off to become her and maintain her.

Is it enough?

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I am second guessing myself left and right today!  I didn’t get much exercise in the first half of this week so I felt like I needed to get more in the second half of the week so that I see some movement in the scale on Sunday.  Yesterday I felt great and did an hour of cardio on the elliptical.  It was the easiest hour on the elliptical I’ve had in a long time. Today I had plans while Pres was at school (social – the best kind of plans) so I decided to take him to the gym after I picked him up from preschool.  I only got in half an hour because I wasn’t feeling it and I had a million and one things to do before I had to go to work.  I managed to burn 400 calories in 30 minutes which was awesome but I felt somewhere deep inside of me saying “its not enough!”

Later I was at home doing some meal planning for the weekend and thinking about Saturday’s meals so that I can have a good weigh in on Sunday.  I started to get worried that there is salt in the cheese I wanted to add to my salad and thought the salt would make me retain water and then I wouldn’t see a loss on the scale the next day.  At that moment I realized that I had stepped into the obsessive side of me that I have to very carefully monitor.

I decided to just shake it off.  What I’m doing is enough.  If I choose to eat salads on Saturdays that have cheese that contain salt but am eating salad and not cheeseburgers and fries I have made a significant change.  If I move for 30 minutes and burn 400 calories it is way better than having spent that hour on the couch.  I am making changes and continuing them over time will have an impact.  I will lose weight.  Even if I’m retaining water from some salt!  Writing this down helps me to see that my ways of thinking are a bit skewed.  I am hopeful that I lose weight this week, but regardless I feel great and have energy I haven’t had in a while.  So I’m gonna keep on truckin’.  I’m committed to the changes I’m making and I’m confident I will have the success I want!

Pain in the…

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Last night as I was falling asleep I was thinking about pain tolerance and how we say that one person has a higher pain tolerance than another person and wondered how we might actually know something like that.  The thing about pain is that pain is such a vague concept in terms of it being comparable to other people.  We can compare our own pain to other times we have experienced pain but can not very clearly relate it to another’s pain.  And when we relate our pain to a previous experience we are measuring current pain with a memory of pain.  And memories have a way of fooling us sometimes – whether it be remembering things worse or better than when we actually experienced it, they are rarely 100% accurate.

Our pain is all connected to our awareness of it.  I had Preston via c-section.  I never even went into labor, it was planned, so one minute I was a happy and (relatively) comfortable pregnant lady and the next minute I was numb from the chest down and hearing the first cries of my new baby boy.  It was a good experience and I would say that I didn’t really feel any pain.  In fact I felt great through the whole procedure.  They pulled the epidural out 24 hours after the birth and as the medicine wore off I became sore and then there was pain; but because I wasn’t aware of the pain before the medicine wore off does that mean that my body did not experience pain during the c-section?

What about emotional pain?  Can another person gauge how painful a given emotional experience might be for someone else?  Can two people experience the same trigger to emotional pain (say a death in the family) and give the pain a different value on the pain scale?  Are we ever experiencing emotional pain and simply unaware of it due to the “epidural” that we have firmly in place to block the pain from being too much?  Can we ever have that pain blocker in place before the pain begins (like we can with physical pain) or is it always secondary to the pain – coping?

Some of these questions I can’t answer.  Pain is so personal and so abstract and yet so concrete all in one.  When I recall times of pain in my life I think first of emotionally painful times and later to physically painful times.  Maybe I have been blessed to have not had to endure too much physical pain – although I’ve had a few doozies!  Maybe the emotional pain has just always rated higher on the pain scale for me.  Maybe I have a high tolerance for physical pain and a low tolerance for emotional pain.  But who’s to say?  Pain is pain.  I have dealt with my physical pain with ibuprofen, ice, stitches, casts, and bandaids.  I have dealt with my emotional pain with tears, screams, silence, laughter (a sometimes awkward reaction but it happens), TV, and food.

Now that I am working daily to monitor my food intake (a primary form of emotional pain block) it brings up a lot of memories of emotional pain.  I had my emotional epidural for a long time so that I could avoid and/or lessen the pain (I still felt the pain when not “medicating” but the food managed to dull it).  Now I’ve essentially pulled the block.  I am not feeling all the pain like a backed up dam, but I still have pain its just not quite clear what the source was for all of it.  Just like when my epidural was pulled after my c I didn’t experience the pain of the actual procedure just the residual effects of new wounds healing.  It took several months to no longer feel pain after my c-section.  And I guess for me, it takes years for the emotional pain (from some wounds) to fully heal – or maybe I’ve perpetuated them instead of allowing them to heal in a timely manner.  So now I’m left to sort out how I will deal with, tolerate, cope with the pain that seems to still be present.

The ironic thing is that in an effort to dull the emotional pain from various experiences with other people I ate which caused me to feel miserable about myself, which put me in a fair amount of pain as well!!  Both emotional pain and physical pain.  I think the challenging part of losing the weight for me is getting out of this cycle.  I have to lose a decent amount of weight before my weight is no longer a source of emotional pain for me – and I fear my weight will forever be a source of emotional pain because of some of the emotional pain I endured in a previous relationship (read a little bit about that here).  I also have to deal with the emotional pain from other experiences that are marbled throughout the parts of me that are depressed about my weight.  It is so complicated.  And yet going forward is so simple – right?  I have to eat less, move more and the weight will come off.  In the meantime I have to cope with emotional pain in a new way so that it doesn’t make me turn to food, and when I want to I just have to tell myself no.  So whether my tolerance for pain is high or low I am extremely aware of it while I attempt to eliminate triggers to pain that I have control of, my weight.  As for how I will deal with pain going forward, be it physical or emotional, is yet to be completely determined.  But I’ll keep you posted ;)

How’s that working for you?

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Yesterday was the first day I had to work since starting my diet.  Have I mentioned I love my job?  I do.  I feel like it is the perfect job for me and it also allows me to be home with Preston a bunch which is really good for the both of us.  I love my job because of what happens when I’m working with couples or families (or individuals).  Perseverance, rethinking, clarifying, honesty, change.  I offer possibility and perspective that my clients may have been unaware of before they came into the office.  I encourage people to see how they impact their world, their family, and themselves – and when they don’t like the impact they’re having I help them find ways to change.  The job requires a delicate balance of stirring the pot and being sensitive and empathetic, being straight-forward and walking the winding path with your clients.  It’s a great job for me.

At one point last night I felt a twinge in my chest and I began to think about food (in an unhealthy, binge triggering kind of way).  I observed this and moved on as I was focused on what was happening in the session but as I drove home last night I began to think about the feeling I had and the topic that was being discussed.  The topic was how a married couple could rely on each other and work together when parenting… every time this topic comes up it reminds me of what I don’t have in the parenting department (a partner) and sends a signal to my brain to cope with emotions I don’t like eat to dull the pain.  Like I said before, in session I can observe it and move on and remain focused but its after work that those feelings come up for me.

In the past year I had developed a habit of coming home from work (around 10:30pm) and eating.  On one hand sometimes I didn’t have dinner before I went or I ate very little before I left for work because I was rushing to get Preston to bed and therefore I would feel hungry at 10:30.  But mostly it was an excuse.  Late night eating has always been a struggle for me – and tends to be a time most overweight people indulge because no one is around to watch.  So on my way home from work I’d stop and get a second dinner or I’d come home and eat whatever I could find in the pantry.  My after work eating was not an all out binge in the 5,000 calorie range or anything, but it was an additional meal which was still likely over 1000 calories so still a binge in my book.

On top of possibly feeling hungry this was also a way of avoiding feeling sad or frustrated about the situation I find myself in, in terms of single parenting and lacking a partner who supports me.  I am so good at avoiding those feelings – I would come home eat my meal and watch TV until midnight or 1am to completely distract myself from thinking about how I felt (and virtually trash myself for the following morning).  I would let myself get lost in TV shows just to escape and avoid feeling.  Of course, no one can keep those feelings inside forever so they’d bleed out in various areas of my life – onto Preston, in my attempt at co-parenting relationship with Justin, to my lack of effort put in other areas of my life etc.  So clearly this was not really working for me, but eating and avoiding has been how I have coped for many years.

So back to last night.  As I drove home (passing Taco Bell, Chipotlé, McDonalds, Five Guys etc) I thought about how easy it would be to go home and follow the same pattern of eating to dull whatever pain or discomfort I was feeling.  But I knew if I indulged I would only be perpetuating the problem.  So I told myself no; no Megan you don’t need to eat anything its 10:30pm you need to go home and go to bed.  So that’s what I did.  One might argue that I still avoided the feelings I have about disliking my single parent status, but I am not sure that 10:30 at night is the best time to attempt to process those feelings anyway.  In fact, I know its not because it would’ve kept me up until well past midnight.

I woke up this morning feeling really good.  I was also proud of myself for doing what I knew I needed to do.  It gave me confidence in myself.  It helped me believe that even though I want more for my life than living in my parent’s basement and being a single mom, I can still be content in the present.  I can still manage me.  AND the more I manage myself now the better the future looks for both myself and for Preston.

Let’s start at the very beginning

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I weighed in on Sunday and started “the diet”!  I know people say not to refer to this as a diet and rather a “lifestyle change” but I like saying diet, so I’m sticking with it.  I realize I have to change my lifestyle and that is permanent, but the losing period – that’s a diet.  For me.  Anyway…

So I guess we start with the weight.  Ugh – I have stage fright to actually say the number, but lets just say I’m starting at almost exactly the same weight I started with in 2005.  I wasn’t too happy, but I just told myself, I’ve done this before so no problem, I got this.  I didn’t want to post about this yesterday because I was avoiding it to give myself the day to see how I did with my eating/exercise.  I had one moment of feeling weak, but I did great!!

Yesterday I spent 50 minutes cutting the grass, which according to My Fitness Pal burned 600 calories (that seems like a lot but I’ll go with it).  I had Fiber One and strawberries for breakfast, avocado toast and carrots for lunch, and a roasted sweet potato, asparagus, and some turkey.  I also had a sugar-free jello pudding cup :)  Felt like a good day.  I decided to record everything in My Fitness Pal for a while to ensure I’m staying in the right calorie range.  So that all felt great.  Today was good as well and did some time on the elliptical.

I noticed today that getting out of the house is really important to helping me not feel so lonely or crave food.  Preston and I got up this morning and bummed around for a bit but then ran a few errands and hit the gym.  Then we came home, had lunch, and then rearranged and purged all of Preston’s toys.  It was quite the job and kept both of us busy all afternoon – no TV, quality mommy and Preston time, and we got so much done!!  I don’t think I’d be up for the overhaul we did today, everyday, but it is definitely something to keep in mind.  I’m exhausted now :)

I’m feel good about things.  This week is all planned out so there is little room for deviation.  I suppose the weekend will likely be the most challenging, especially Mother’s Day.  I’ll just plan something yummy and try to avoid all the snacks that will be out when the family is together.

BTW – at some point I will set up a progress page that shows weight loss week to week and measurement changes.  I measured everything and took before pictures (THEY’RE HORRIBLE!!)  So when I get it together and find the nerves I will share all that in a page you can access at the top of the blog.  Thanks for all the support so far!!