Scale victory!

Confession: Its all about my new life. But today, I win the scale!

It has been an awful week.  My family said goodbye to the best man. One of my very favorite people in the world.  My sweet Father-in-Law passed from this life to begin his eternities, and while we rejoice for him, we miss him already.  I have been an emotional wreck, and watching the man I love mourn his very best friend, has been very hard.  BUT - I want to talk about my journey.  Some of those feelings are too close right now.

For me, emotional wreck means eating.  Food is such a comfort!  I could down much chocolaty goodness during a hard time, and go and go, and spiral down to full blown addiction mode.

I have been changing my habits much, but I will be so honest, I had a small piece of cake. Some taffy there, a bite of chocolate here and here.  I am still the addict.  I know this.  I focused on healthy meals. Its the in between that I struggled with.  

I did well however.  I had a few slips, but I do not feel sucked back in.  I feel like I am still in control, which is a wonderful feeling! I am hanging in there! 

But because of my slips and "bad behavior" I thought I had better take the plunge, weigh myself, see the damage...I have not weighed in about a week, and I had been hovering for a week or 2 at 203-201 lbs.   I was nervous.  Imagine my surprise! For the first time in over 20 years- I weigh less than 200 pounds!  

ONEDERLAND baby!!

I am so happy- I can barely keep it in!  My goal was to be at this weight by June 18th!  I DID IT! I am elated!  I needed this, this hard week.  This is a scale victory for sure!

However, usually its about the non-scale victories.  I love how I feel, my energy, my accomplished feeling, and my ability to do the things I need to, and WANT to.  Don't focus on the scale.  You are MORE than the scale.  

I AM MORE than the scale! 

(But today, we might just be bestest friends!)

Can we talk about Running?

Confession: I love to run!
Once upon a time, in a life, long long ago, I used to run.  I love running! I loved how it made me feel, well, not during the actual running, but the endorphin kick an hour or two after the run.  In fact, the very first time I ran, my friend, Susan Wright, talked me into staying after school to run track with her.  This was not a hard thing to convince me to do since a very cute boy, whom I liked bunches, stayed to do field events also.

That first day, we ran a total of 10 miles between warm ups and all the splits we ran.  I was young, only 14, which made it possible to survive this craziness.  After they dropped me at my house, they told me they would be back in a few hours to go to a dance at the school.  I told them to just go without me, because I was probably going to bed.  To die.  Susan and cute boy knowingly told me, that I would be fine, and they would be there at 9 pm.

I tried to die. I did. But then those lovely endorphins hit.  I was hooked!  I could not believe how fantastic I felt!  Beyond fantastic!  I bounced around that dance like a crazy baby bunny, and continued to run many times a week until I had my oldest 6 years later.  

I ran when I was happy, I ran when I was angry, I ran when I was bored.  I wanted to run forever.  

Over the years I have missed this time.  I have tried to do it, over the past, but my weight was too taxing on this idea.  I hurt like crazy, and it was pointless to try.  It really was.  I could never walk the next day, and that was when I tried running 100 yards at a time, walk, then try again.  

Now I can, I am running further and further each time I run.  It feels wonderful, and I could get addicted to that, in a big hurry, but I am afraid.  I feel justified in that fear as well. Knees.  My knees.  Can you imagine the trauma I have put them through????  

They always used to hurt, and every step I took, there was a clicking sound.  Loud and audible like the click of this keyboard I type on.  Now, I do not have those problems, but the damage has all been done.  

My solution is to only run twice a week.  I walk miles and miles every day, but I would like to not kill my recovering knees.  

But those two times.  Oh the joy I feel!  It feels like youth!  It feels like freedom.  It feels like a heaven on Earth.  I love it so much, I wish I could share the elation in my heart as I run! How many years I have longed to have that liberating feeling that running brings me!  I swear its elation is too much!  But its finally mine, again.

I am slow. Really slow.  But I don't care.  I am not 14 years old anymore.  (nor would I ever want to be.) 

Oh- did I mention that a very very cute boy likes to run with me?

He is super hot.

Ready to talk

Finally.  I am ready to talk.  I thought that I would be talking and taking you on this journey with me.  I am open and I wanted this to be able to help another who is considering this kind of lifestyle change.  What I did not foresee was the depths of despair and frustration my journey has taken me to.  Never in my life have I felt so low, so lonely, and my ability to pull myself out, was not there.  I felt lower than flat.  I was below the surface, like a drowning, I could see those above the water, reaching out to me to grab their hands, but I couldn't raise my arm to meet them, everything getting more and more blurry as I sank to the bottom.  I tried to drown once, when we lived in Louisiana. I remember it vividly.  This felt very very similar to that.  The thing that is exactly the same, is the prayer and faith I had that I would not actually drown.  I didn't.  I am here.

I had every complication known to man, I swear.  Starting with 48 hours after my weight loss surgery, having to go back in for a revision.  Then in September, ending up in the ER and another 2 night stay at the hospital because I was so sick.  Another ER trip for fluids out here in Tooele, leading to a scope being put down my throat to remove a stricture.  2 straight weeks of throwing up even a few ice chips, then another 3 months of being unable to drink water because of the TWO gastric leaks I had, a PICC line put in my arm so that I could hydrate myself at home with the assistance of home health, 4 abdominal CTs, all culminating in a exploratory surgery to find out what in the world was keeping me so sick! I could barely carry myself up the stairs.  I did not cook one meal or clean my home for that entire 4 months.  I maybe made a PB&J for Juliet a few times, but mostly we just had snacks near my bed.  I was barely a mother to that sweet angel.  She mothered me.  Loved me, cared for me.  Never have I felt such sweetness from an angel from heaven.  Waking from that surgery and hearing that I was fixed, and it was over, was the brightest moment I had felt in all those dark months.  I was the 1%.  Now. I wasn't!

With and through all of this, it was not my faith that wavered.  I knew God heard my prayers.  I knew that Christ had borne all my trials and tribulations for me.  I even knew that they loved me so much, and didn't love watching me suffer.  my darkness was wondering if I could do it. Not why me? Not when will this be over? But can I do this, because it would be so much easier to give up, and be done. Several times I wanted out.  I knew how easy it would be to be done.  Miss a hydration, and I would die.  I never seriously considered it. I don't think. probably. maybe. My husband. My babies.  They kept me here.

I put on a fake smile and said I was fine.  I was not fine.  I was literally dying.  I was so tired.  I hurt. All the time. It was the darkest, most horrible point of my life.

But it was worth it, and I would sign up to do it again tomorrow if I had to.  Knowing how hard it was, and feeling the pain and misery, I would DO IT AGAIN.  My weight loss surgery is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.  It has changed my life in such a profound way.  I am a bigger, better, brighter, happier, stronger, and healthier me now!

I am down 115 pounds as of this morning.  No other way would I have been able to do that!  I am off of all my medications!  My blood pressure is as it was in high school!  I weight250.2 pounds!  tomorrow it will be 1.5 pounds less, since that is my pattern!  I can finally drink 64+ ounces of water each day, and I was finally starting to do my regular things!  I did say was. Because on December 22, I was able to have my hysterectomy!  I did not think I was ever going to be well enough to have it!  I was getting so scared, because my uterus was growing polyps again, and the bleeding, well, honestly, the hemorrhaging was back.  so yes, I am set back a bit, but its a different setback, in 5 more weeks, I will be able to be myself again, and I am so very excited.  I am ready to be me.

I am planning on sharing lots more from now on, I just couldn't before.  I had nothing to give.  but I do now. Lots!

Supports

Confession:

I am not as confident as I appear to be.

I have been mulling over things in my heart, mind, and prayers for a long time concerning the new turn in weight loss.  I knew I could not do any of this without my two key people.  My David, and my Savior.  My husband has been nothing but supportive, kind, loving, and excited for and with me.  He truly brings his strength when I have none, his heart when mine breaks, and his laughter to stop my tears.  No one could have been a better husband to me.  He really is my partner in crime.  I would never be the person I am without him dancing behind me with his Pom Poms!  

In those dark times, when I am pushing my body harder than I am sure it can bear, and when I get a win; great or small, That is when I feel my Savior supporting me.  How Christ truly bears our burdens is made evident to me during these times!  When I  am cheering and giving gratitude to My Father in Heaven, I feel My Savior's love.  When I am on my evening walks, and the sun is setting in a blaze of color, I feel Him beside me helping me walk.  I want to be a better person for Him.

With all of this love, I still have doubts and confusion and fear.  I know many in my family and dear friends love me.  I know they will stand with me through this, but I swear that fear seeps in, telling me that I am not good enough, I am going to lose people because they do not respect the choice I have made, or do not care enough to understand it.  I know its irrational, but is it? Is it really?  My obesity has caused huge rifts in relationships.  Most of the rift is my fault, because I am ashamed of how I look.  I am self conscience of the thoughts friends and family are having about how I let myself look this way.  It is really a horrible way to tear myself down.  Yet I do it.  

As an example, two people whom I love dearly, I saw in person for the first time.  I was so excited to see them, and talk, in person, but I was filled with such fear of rejection, because of the way I look, I almost didn't go.  It is silly to think my outside would hide my inside, but it was so terrifying, I couldn't stop the scenarios in my head.  Only through prayer was I able to have the faith to get on that airplane.  (Thank goodness I did!)

Today I shared this Blog with a few people.  Hoping to build my support team.  Terrified of rejection and judgement. It was very hard.  But I am ready.  I am ready to share, hopefully help someone.  My prayer today was for courage.  

Maybe tomorrow I will have the courage to post before pictures.

Confession and change

I guess I will start here, with an explanation. I used to say that I was the healthiest fat woman you could meet.  I didn't have any health problems that you could expect from someone of my considerable weight.  I have been extremely lucky.  No diabetes, no blood pressure issues. No apnea.  I was just extra thick.

Well, that changed. 

 I guess things started to fall apart much earlier than I was willing to admit, but I bet that is fair typical of anyone who is being confronted with their own hand in their mortality.  I would dare say that my problems started 6 years ago, but I am just going to pretend that is NOT true. Ok? Let me have this one.  This Year, at the end of February, I started having horrible women problems.  Bluntly put, I was having a period to end all periods.  Only it didn't end.  By the first of May I was a mess.  It was still heavier than I had ever experienced, more than after giving birth to my four children!  I was ill, weak, and beyond frustrated.  I was horribly anemic, and after a few tests, I was down almost 3 units of blood. I couldn't fathom what my problem was.  

End result? I have a softball sized fibroid on the outside of my Uterus, I had several polyps inside of the uterus, and the uterus itself was as big as if I was 6 months pregnant!  All of these things were with a ultrasound, and subsequent biopsy and surgery.  For some, a hysterectomy would have been preformed right then, but no.  As my very kind OBGYN stated,  

"because of the thick abdominal wall"

 it would be unsafe and unwise to preform such a surgery at this state. I have been put into medically induced menopause to shrink the uterus and fibroid, to help.  It's not enough.  I need to lose weight to have the surgery happen safely.  Yep. I am too obese to have a hysterectomy safely.  Not cool. Not cool at all.

I was mortified of course, but encouraged to make a change.  It started slowly, as I had just had surgery.   But March started a process, started a dream, and started a reality.  May I pushed it into overdrive, and here it is August and I am ready to share that very soon- hopefully within a month, I will be having weight loss surgery!!   I had not planned this to be the route I took to lose my weight, but as my health, and words like precancerous polyps start being tossed around like candy in a parade, the reality of its necessity slaps you upside the head.  I have been working for the last 6 months with several doctors, to make this happen.  I have been walking everyday, I am up to 5 miles a day. (2 to 3 walks to accomplish this feat!) I am in a constant state of pain from the walking, but I feel better than I have in 7 years!  I also have lost 30lbs, which is amazing in and of itself, but the inches is what is amazing!  I wear a 24 now!  That is down from a tight 28!  I am thrilled!  

While all of my hard, hard work is paying off, it is not fast enough to save me.  I do not want Cancer.  I have to do something drastic, and ultimately much harder.  But I can do this.  I can.  I am so excited for change.