My last post is from nearly 10 months ago, filled with my plans and aspirations to get going again. As many of you have experienced in covid, those aspirations fell flat. Baby struggled with sleep, work got stressful, Elliot needed increasingly more attention….in short, taking care of myself fell to the bottom of the priority list. So many times I wanted to sit down and write here, my sounding board, but the shame of failure kept me from doing so.
The scale continued to move up, slowly but surely, and I’m finally ready to take this seriously again. Margaret just turned one last month and is sleeping better and is more independent during the day. After spring break, Elliot will be in school 5 days a week. My work has plans to cut back some of my hours, for which I am grateful. All that leaves me time to be able to reprioritize my health.
I’ve taken a few steps to help me jumpstart my weight loss this time around. Some of you may have mixed feelings on appetite suppressants. When I lost a significant amount of weight after Elliot was born, it was started with the use of these. I didn’t take them for long, and they were able to help me shrink my stomach and utilize my lapband as it was intended. My band is to a point that I don’t want to get it adjusted again, as I already have issues with getting stuck on my food, but my appetite is as high as it has ever been. I started on a low dose phentermine today, and I hope it’ll help me getting my hunger back to a normal point.
Many people believe that weight loss surgery and the use of pharmaceutical weight loss is taking the easy way out. I will tell you first hand this couldn’t be further from the truth. Cravings do not go away on their own. Neither route stops you from the emotions that cause you to overeat. For those of us with lifelong weight struggles, for the most part we get to this point because of an unhealthy relationship with food. In the past, I wished my addiction was something that could be totally cut off, like alcohol or drugs, but there’s no going “cold turkey” quitting food. (They call that anorexia…)
One thing I know will help me this time around is that my husband is my partner in this. Lately, he has started taking his own health seriously, so my desire to make that easier for him will help drive me as well. With both of us making this commitment, we can start clearing out the house of temptations and filling it with better choices. Grandma’s house will always be a struggle, but we’ll just have to make good decisions before going over each day…
The biggest thing for me this time is having a plan. I have set some ground rules on food for myself, but I will also not be so rigid that I can’t live. I can give more details on that in the future for you all if that would be of help.
As far as fitness, I am gradually doing things to get more active. For Christmas, I started playing the Nintendo Switch video game called Ring Fit, which has helped get me started. It’s a lot of fun and makes a video game a workout. With the weather getting nice and our local park reopening, I have been making the 1.5 mile round trip to the playground with the kiddos (including my 20-pounder on my back!). I hope by this summer the gym will reopen with childcare, as I’d like to make a daily habit of that again.
One last step I took was starting a DietBet to hold myself accountable. For those of you unfamiliar with it, you join a game for a certain amount of money, have 4 weeks to lose 4% of your bodyweight, and if you succeed, you split the earnings with the other winners. It gives an extra money motivation to make good choices! I made about $30 last time I did it.
I’m serious about it and am ready for a change. I want to be able to chase my son around the yard again, to climb and jump and be an active mom. I debated on writing this blog entry now and not publish it until I knew I was good to stick with my plan, but I am going to ask you all to provide another level of accountability for me. It took me a couple years to get the weight off after my first pregnancy, and I don’t anticipate this going quickly.
Thanks for my old faithful readers, as well as those of you who are just now joining me on this journey. My hope is to document my journey to health for you all. It won’t be easy, I can’t promise I’ll be perfect…actually, I guarantee I won’t be. It’ll be raw and honest. I want to start writing more regularly, so if there are discussion points you would like to read about, please let me know. Hang with me through this. After all, I am still a work in progress.
A Work in Progress 