Hoping052017

Addictions come in all sorts of forms. The most common forms of addiction people think of are drugs and alcohol. And those are both, obviously, bad. There's other addictions too though. There's addictions to soda pop, bread, pasta, cookies, cakes and other pastries, food in general. I think most people that have gotten to "OMG I have to do something about my weight or I'm going to die" have some form of food addiction. I've been realizing, albeit way too slowly, that I am addicted to sugar. I may even be addicted to food in general. I was at the grocery store with my mom today and at the checkout are the candies. Reese's, Twix, Butterfingers, York Peppermint Patty, M&Ms...the list goes on and on. I nearly cried because I wanted some (and I really didn't care which one either) chocolate yumminess (that usually isn't all that yummy after I eat it) so badly. I am so glad I am going to be going to a therapist starting on Thursday. I HAVE GOT to get this crap under control before my surgery. I should already be at least 20 pounds down by now and I think I'm the same weight I was last month. I'm awful about not logging any meal that isn't good for me. I'll log all the ones that are right on track though. I don't even understand why I want the stuff. It doesn't taste good most of the time and then I feel all kinds of guilty after I eat it. Other times I'm just so depressed that I couldn't give a rats patootie what I eat, so I don't eat what I'm supposed to. Like tonight mom bought pizza for dinner. I could have run over here to my house and gotten the leftover chicken and broccoli from the other night. No carbs hardly at all. I could have been a good girl, but no. I just didn't care. I was tired, hungry, and depressed and so I ended up eating two pieces of pizza, a cheesy bread stick with marinara sauce, and a chocolate chip cookie since I figured I'd already blown the whole meal anyway. Now I'm just tired and even more depressed. How do you fight an addiction to food? I'm scared that I'm going to go from one extreme to the other. Going from a see food diet to a no food diet. I guess that's something for the therapist to deal with, huh? I hate this. I'm going to bed. Night night.

Today was an awesome, albeit a dietetic frustration, day. Mom and I went out today. She had a couple of Dr. appointments and since she pretty much refuses to wear her prescription glasses ("I can see the big stuff" she says) I drive her around on a regular basis (much to the chagrin of my nerves). I get home from taking the oldest to school (the boy refuses to get a drivers license!) and decide to unload some of the articles from my mom's storage locker that I've had in my trunk for the last week. Freezing my arse off I gave up on that idea pretty fast. By this time I decide to go inside and warm up, maybe get some hot tea, and make breakfast. I was thinking my usual 2 eggs, sunny side up with a cup of greek yogurt. Lots of protein! Yeah...that didn't happen because I had just started to get the stuff together to do that when mom asks what I'm doing - we have to leave in 15 minutes for the Dr. "But that's this afternoon!" "Dr. Mike is this afternoon. This morning I have to see Emily" I'm thinking "well, poop. I don't even have time to make a shake before we leave" (and my tummy has already been growling for an hour. Oh joy. We Get her to the Dr. and don't get out of there until almost 11:30. It's lunch time! Ok, mom, where to eat? "How's Panera or Olive Garden sound?" Well, considering the last time I ate at Olive Garden I could find something that I could eat, but it cost a bloody fortune for a lunch menu (which we found out later was actually put in the computer as a dinner item) and I had gas so bad it hurt, I chose Panera. Surely there's something at Panera I could eat without compromising my diet too badly. Then I saw it...New England Clam Chowder. My favorite soup in the world aside of Olive Garden's Zupa Toscana. So I decided on a half Chicken Caesar Salad and a cup of soup for lunch with an apple (which I gave to mom). Big, big, huge mistake all the way around. The salad tasted okay, but it ended up causing pain in my gut. The soup...well, I could only get down two bites it was so icky. Have you ever had potatoes in soup that you can tell they've been frozen by the way they mush when you bite into them and remind you of really nasty instant mashed potatoes that weren't really mixed all that well? That's what these potatoes were like. Eww. My clam chowder tastes like a gourmet chef prepared it compared to what this was today. Thankfully, the lack of desirability for me to eat that soup saved me major amounts of caloric intake for lunch. Not even an hour and a half later, mom states she needs something to satiate her sweet tooth. I managed to put that one off until almost 3. She wanted either TCBY or Olive Garden. I knew TCBY had a greek frozen yogurt so I went there and had half of their little cup of the Greek Honey Vanilla yogurt topped with a spoonful of chopped pecans. Nothing else fancy. It actually ended up pretty yummy. I was surprised. Lots of protein again. Yay me! Mom and I are having our yogurts when she asks what we're having for dinner. Doe in the headlights look greeted this question. I have no clue. We forgot to take anything out to defrost and we aren't going to feel like cooking and cleaning after this. I agreed, but what to do for dinner? Mom's suggestions....#1 on the list - Spaghetti. #2 on the list - Macaroni topped with baked beans #3 on the list - Lasagna (are you starting to see a pattern here?) So I went with #3 and let her know that I had leftovers from last night that I could heat up to eat while they had that. When we went to the grocer, though, I ended up finding this Healthy Choice Steamers Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo and Oikos Lemon Meringue yogurt. OMG! both were so yummy!!! I could so totally see getting some spaghetti squash and pouring that over it! Speaking of Spaghetti squash! This truly is the best way I have found to cook spaghetti squash! It makes the strands actually LOOK like spaghetti! It's amazing, truly! After I put all of what I ate today into My Fitness Pal (MFP) I found out that I actually made my protein goal! 77 grams of protein taken in today and that's before my cheese slice that I have before bed, which will up my total to 80+ grams today. I could actually see myself hitting 100 grams if I had had my eggs and yogurt this morning. That amazed me. What also amazed me was all the things I WANTED to eat today. The San Fransisco sourdough bread mom bought today...the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups at the checkout at the grocery....All the pastries at Panera and the bakery...the clam chowder that I ultimately caved in on (but was thankfully thwarted of because of the taste of it)...the lasagna that the rest of the family had along with the garlic Texas toast...the Hershey Kiss Thumbprint cookies mom bought because the family just HAD to have a sweet treat. (I'm really glad she hid those because I really did go looking for them after dinner because they looked SO good!) I swear I was like a recovering alcoholic that was thrown into a bar! I'm truly addicted to sweets. Not candy, per se, but mostly pastries and cookies and stuff like that. Though even seeing the open bag of chocolate chips in the pantry is a massive temptation to grab a handful to eat by themselves. Do they have sugar eaters anonymous or something like that? "Hi, My name is Alex and I'm addicted to sugar" I am, too. And milk. OMG I think I would die if I couldn't have milk anymore. So, that's my discovery for today...I'm addicted to sugar. I wonder what I'll discover about myself tomorrow?

Today is cold, dreary, grey...the kind of day that would normally make me want to stay in bed and forget about the world because weather like this depresses me major. But not today. It's really hard to be depressed when the shower I took this morning was the BEST shower I have taken in over a year!!!! Yes, the best shower in over a year. Why, you ask? What made this shower better than any other shower in the history of showers? I didn't cry! Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but let me give you a little bit of background on my showers over the past couple of years. My skin is hypersensitive. Like, clothes hurt hypersensitive. No, I don't live in a nudist colony so I don't have to wear clothes. But I don't like wearing clothes because they hurt. I do it...obviously, but even if I could get by without wearing clothes all the time, I wouldn't. I don't like what I look like. I'd rather deal with the pain of the clothes on my skin than the pain of grossing people out with what was under my clothes. I've always loved showers. I'd spend close to an hour in the shower if I could get by with it. (enough hot water and all that jazz). But that changed about 4 years ago. The water from the shower head gradually began hurting more and more until about a year and a half ago (maybe it's been two years now) showers began hurting so bad that I would cry every time I took a shower. Since I'm not a major masochist, I took to taking showers only once a week or so, washing my hair every other day in between by hanging my head over the side of the tub and using the handheld shower head. I missed my long, hot showers that relaxed my aching muscles. I missed the feeling of the water running down my back. Today was the first time in so...Soooo long that when I finally got the courage up to put my back under the falling water I didn't realize for at least a minute that I wasn't in tears from the pain. It was the mild annoyance of long ago. The kind of mild annoyance that is easy to ignore. When I used my loofa to clean my skin, it didn't feel like I was washing myself with course sand paper! Afterwards I could brush my hair without going 'Ow!' every other stroke! I don't know if this miracle is going to last beyond today, but I am so grateful for the reprieve (if even only for a day).

Am I ready for this?! ......No. ..... Yes. ..... Maybe. ....Wait. What was the question? Am I ready for what? ... This blog that isn't a blog (in my opinion), but a journal of what is going on in this journey called life? Life itself? This weight loss surgery that I am desperately attempting to prepare for? This blog I'm definitely not ready for, but I'm going to do it anyway because maybe by getting over some of my fears, I'll be able to conquer others and hopefully inspire other people to conquer their own inner chicken. Yes, I said inner chicken. It was something that I heard at my youngest son's poetry slam a few months ago and it just stuck with me. Why be afraid of writing a blog? Ummm...because I'm not a very good writer? Because...people can be downright cruel? Because I may be judged for writing what I write? There's a number of things that would make my inner chicken quiver in its boots. (Yes, my inner chicken wears big, heavy, poop kickers! and those poop kickers regularly kick my big behind) Life itself? Who the heck is ready for life itself? Why the heck do you think babies come into this world kicking and screaming? They want back in!!! They are screaming "Put me back in! Put me BACK IN! This place is cold, and loud, and bright, and scary! Put me back where it's quiet, and warm, and comfy, and safe." Some babies grow out of that. Those are the ones that grow into little dare devils. The ones that will give their mothers figurative heart attacks by climbing to the tallest point (quite literally) of the playground where mommy can't reach them and sit down to seemingly ponder the world around them. Yes. This is what my oldest did to me when he was three. He was the one that came a little over a month early (though he tried for 2 months early). Didn't make a sound when he was born. (scared the crap out of me because I thought he was born dead or something) Made up for that fact profusely later (as evidenced in Blockbuster video where he screamed so loud and long that the entire place came running to find out what I was doing to the poor child). And now wants to go into the Navy after he graduates high school in a few months. And now my middle child, my little girl, is wanting to go to a college prep school so she can be a veterinarian at the ripe old age of 12 and the youngest of my 3 big brood is about to start middle school, leaving behind the last remnants of elementary school that I'll have to deal with forever. Am I ready for life itself? NOOOO!!! Put me back in! PUT ME BACK IN!!!!! I'M NOT READY!!!! Yeah, that's going to happen. .... NOT! Am I ready for this weight loss surgery that I'm desperately trying to prepare for? Yes. Unequivocally Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt I am ready for this. I know I'm ready. I think I'm ready. Am I ready? You know...I hope so. It's scary. Not the surgery itself. I'm not scared about that. This surgery will be number 14 in a long line of surgeries. Everything from my first surgery at age 5 to remove rectal polyps to having my tonsils and adenoids out the day before I turned 6 to a complete hysterectomy a little over 3 years ago because of major pain I was having in my gut that turned out to be IBS. So I'm no stranger to having surgery. What I'm scared of is not succeeding yet again. I went on my first actual Dr. supervised diet at the age of 9. I've been yo-yo dieting ever since. Over 30 years of yo-yo dieting. I've tried everything it seems like. I've tried Advocare, Herbalife, Atkins, Cabbage soup, the diabetes diet, Alli, Phenergan, Slim fast, weight watchers...lots of different diets. It was after I stepped on the scale at the Dr. office in July of 2013 and it read 310 pounds that I finally had had enough of this mess. I haven't been below 200 pounds in 18 years. (i was 198 when I got pregnant with my oldest son who will be 18 in a few months). As soon as I left the Dr. I went directly to Best Buy and bought a FitBit and an Aria scale. Best money I had spent in years. I actually got down to 246 pounds in about a years time. But as with all the other times, I gained again. This time topping out at 286. I stayed there for several months. In August 2016, after a physical therapy session, I saw a flyer for a weight loss surgery seminar that the hospital was hosting. It got me thinking about weight loss surgery again for, like, the millionth time in the past 20 years. But I already knew where I wanted to go. The thing was convincing the one person who would talk me out of it just like she had every other time that I thought about it...my mom. I didn't have to worry anymore about my husband forbidding it as he had for years because he had died in 2013. So the issue was how to get mom to realize that this was going to be the best option for me. One of the local hospitals was hosting a seminar soon. I would take her to it. I had already talked to the nice people at Roller Weight Loss and had already watched their online seminar and had made up my mind that was where I wanted to go for my surgery, but mom wouldn't watch the seminar. But she would go to the seminar being hosted a couple towns over. Two weeks later, after we left the seminar, my mom looked at me and said, "You have to have this surgery. I don't want to lose you." And that was that. After I got the money together for the registration fee for Roller (my birthday present from me to me last year) I scheduled my first appointment. Unfortunately, that appointment couldn't be until November 4. November 4 came faster than I imagined it would. That day felt like i was put through the proverbial wringer. Fasting blood work, nutrition appointment, EKG, breathing test, H-Pylori test (that was a first. Had never heard of that one before), chest x-rays, OMG! This was absolutely insane. Though, I was grateful that they were being so thorough with my care. They don't want to take anything to chance. So, now, I'm getting ready for my fourth Diet and Exercise appointment on February 6. Less than a week away. Then I have March and April Appointments to get through and then I will be scheduled to have surgery within a few weeks of that last appointment. Easy breezy rice and cheezy, right? Yeah, not for me. No. See, I haven't lost much weight since that first month. I think I've lost 14 pounds since November 4. And it's entirely my fault! Over the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of thinking about WHY I haven't stuck with my pre-op diet. Don't I want to lose weight? Don't I want to see my future grand babies? Don't I want to see my daughter graduate veterinary school? Don't I want to see my little squirt graduate high school? YES!!! I want all those things! So what's the big deal? What's my major malfunction preventing me from getting what I want? My head is majorly screwed up. That's my major malfunction. So, I decided to do something about it. I went back to the therapist yesterday. I did it. I finally kicked my inner chicken back. My inner chicken is still there. Yes, it is. But for this, it's backed off. I'll be going every week and a half to get help with my major depression and anxiety disorders. To get help with pain management that has me in tears often because of my upper back pain. To get help conquering my personal demons that prevent me from getting a good night's sleep most nights. Why haven't I gone sooner you might ask. Well, it's a deep subject. I went to several after my husband committed suicide in 2013. I only found one that began to help. Then I was fired from a job I had had for nearly 15 years because i was always sick and hadn't put in a 40 hour work week in almost a year, thus losing me my insurance and the therapist that was beginning to help. Then I tried the only therapy place that Medicaid would cover. That ended up being a total disaster. You know, seeing someone maybe once a month if you're lucky when you don't want to be on the face of the earth anymore doesn't help a whole heck of a lot. So, March 15, 2014 I stopped going to that place. Stopped getting help of any kind. Tried to find a boyfriend. Found a good friend that helped as much as he could. Now, I help him at his shop when I can, but I barely hear from him. It makes me really sad. And I went back to that unhelpful place yesterday because I realized that I can't do this by myself. And I can't lean on my mom for everything because she has her own personal demons to fight and she leans on me to battle those and I'm afraid (scared to death really) that she's developing dementia like my Grams did. The lady I met yesterday I like. And the funniest, most ironic thing possible happened. I found out that she is in the pre-op stages of getting the same surgery I'm getting through the same clinic that I'm going through. My new therapist is going through the same thing I am as far as bariatric surgery goes. Crazy, right?! I'm trying to understand why I do the things I do. Why it is that EVERY SINGLE Blessed time that i am going good on a diet (I've lost a ton of weight, people notice and compliment me, I'm getting into smaller clothes) I just stop. Just. Flat. Stop. It makes no sense to me. Not even a penny of sense. Why do I jeopardize every diet? Why do I always blame it on someone else? It's someone else that's sabotaging me. Not me. I know that to be a cart full of bologna. But it's what I do. And I want to know why. I mean I know I'm scared of not knowing what I'm going to look like afterwards. I know I'm scared of having to change practically every aspect of myself (the way I dress, the way I eat, the way I organize things, the way I plan things) And that, I think would be scary for anyone, let alone someone with anxiety issues and major depression amongst several other things. That is why I'm starting this journal of sorts, this blog. To chronicle these steps I'm going to be taking to a new me. Hopefully, by the end of it all, I will be able to see someone in the mirror that I'm proud of being. Someone that I'm not ashamed of. Someone who is able to stand up and take charge of her life, goals, and new dreams. Someone who can kick her inner chicken and its poop kickers to the curb, pluck it, and have it for dinner! God and Heaven Bless and Protect you always.