Balancing Act

I’ve been traveling for work the past three weeks. First up was Philadelphia, then Chicago and finally Dallas. I’m really fortunate to get the opportunity to travel all over the country and see cities I may not take the time to see on my own. Philly and Chicago were a treat to me, because I had never been to those places. I got to see the Liberty Bell and take a night bike tour of Chicago, all within two weeks.

Unfortunately, I was traveling without much help from my lap-band. Since I was so sick (see post below) from taking medicine for my broken foot, they had to take a lot of fluid out of my band. This makes it looser. This means I can eat more and faster. Not good for the fat kid that will forever live

inside me. The good news is that my stomach has completely healed and I’m not feeling malnourished anymore. The bad news is that my travels were unexpected and I didn’t have time to get my band tightened before I left. When it gets tightened I have to go on a liquid diet for 48 hours and then a mushy-food diet for 48 hours. Four days of not a lot of calories is not a good idea when I’m traveling and logging long hours. Plus, I’m often in situations where I don’t have control of where I eat.

When I’m not traveling, I usually have one cheat meal a week. I tend to lean towards a steak and frozen yogurt. I try not to eat a lot of red meat or sweets, so allowing myself to have those items once a week makes me feel less deprived. Now, with that being said, I have to always practice self-control. It’s so easy to use special occasions and traveling as an excuse to bend the diet rules. I definitely did that the past few weeks.

I can’t help but feel very lonely sometimes. I know a lot of people struggle with food, but no one really talks about it. I get tired of trying to justify or defend what I’m eating at all times. Surely, I’m not the only person in the world that has this constant internal dialogue I have going on when it comes to eating. It would really help if I knew how other people felt, because maybe I wouldn’t feel so damn bad about myself sometimes. Here’s the full confession of things I shouldn’t have eaten while traveling:

Two blueberry muffins (two different days)

• Half a country fried chicken (Never again. You can bet money on it. I was pretty sure my arteries hardened)
• Baked potato
• Mashed potatoes (twice)
•  Five alcoholic drinks (not all at once)
• Strawberry smoothie
• Three chili’s Southwestern Egg Rolls
• Chips and queso
• One fried pickle
•  Five sweet treats (cookies, a cupcake, 1/3 of a piece of carrot cake, 1/2 a crème brule, chocolate mousse)

I didn’t want to admit all of this, because it makes me feel like a failure. I truly strive to be as honest as possible on this blog, so there you have it. I feel gross and ashamed. Before you judge me, I invite you to make a list of all the items you probably shouldn’t have eaten in the past month.

Now for the reality check: it’s may not be all that bad. I was extremely busy and running around during the days I was working. I was sightseeing and sometimes working out at night. Plus, I only traveled three days each week, and I mostly followed my diet when I was at home. I miraculously didn’t gain any weight, but I fully recognize that I probably would if I kept this cycle going.

Another important point to make is that I’m taking it upon myself to get my band tightened. A lot of people with this surgery don’t like the pain of getting it adjusted and enjoy being able to eat normally. I hate it. I like the restrictions my band place on me. I have to chew my food well, eat slowly and can only have small portions. Do I sometime have to excuse myself because I get food stuck and have to throw up? Sure, but almost everyone in my life knows my situation, so it gets a little less mortifying each time it happens.

I know every time I mess up, I can’t pat myself on the back and tell myself it is ok just because I don’t gain any weight.  Lower weight does not equal good health. I also know that I want to enjoy my life and not feel like I just ran over a puppy every time I want to stray from my diet. I truly enjoy eating healthy. I love the feeling I have at the end of the day when I know I didn’t put anything toxic in my body.

I’m off next week to get my band tightened. I’m done traveling for a couple of weeks, so I will be able to get back to my routine. The bad news is that my foot is definitely still broken. It hasn’t improved. In fact, I think it’s worse. I need to get an MRI to get the probable diagnosis of surgery. If that’s the case it will be at least December before I could consider taking time off for surgery. I can deal with the pain, but not being able to not get good cardio makes me depressed. Bike riding is going well, but not when I have to do it in the gym. It just doesn’t give me a good workout.

My goal for this month is to continue working on finding a balance in my life. I’m also going to stick with doing whatever workouts I can to keep me moving. Something is better than nothing, even if it’s not exactly what I want to be doing. The last thing I need is to get out of shape. I’ve learned a few things over the past year. I’m nowhere near the mess I was before I started this journey.

Welcome Back

Well, I’ve had a rough time lately on many levels. I’ve had a few setbacks, but the good news is that my weight is holding steady. Trust me, after everything that’s happened, I’m perfectly happy with that.

We went to Florida at the beginning of July. We had a lot of fun, but I was having a lot of trouble eating. I got sick almost every day and was having a hard time even drinking protein shakes. When I get sick I’m supposed to go to liquids for 48 hours, but I was on vacation. I didn’t want to be weak and grumpy because I was so hungry. I got desperate for calories and turned to frozen yogurt. It was the only thing that didn’t hurt. The cold would ease the swelling on my stomach and take the pain away. I even had a plan. I would attempt to eat all day, and succeed about 25 percent of the time. Then at night a couple of hours before bed, I would eat some frozen yogurt to make my stomach stop hurting and give me enough calories to make me not feel hunger. This allowed me to be comfortable and get some sleep. I know it sounds horrible, but honestly it’s kind of just part of my life.

I had always been told by my surgeon that sinus drainage will make my stomach swell. I had been having some allergies, so I thought maybe this is why my stomach was so swollen. We were about to head home, so I planned to just figure something out when we got home. Then we got a call that Eli’s favorite uncle had died. We headed home for a few days, and then headed out to Albuquerque for the funeral. I was taking Mucinex like it was candy and eating nothing but soup and ice cream. I felt like crap. At this point, the hypochondriac in me was convinced I was developing an eating disorder.

I had a previously scheduled appointment with my surgeon coming up, so I stuck it out for a few more days. At this point I was drinking shakes during the day. My dinner consisted of eating a few bites of soup until it hurt and then eating a few bites of ice cream to ease the pain. I would do this back and forth until I couldn’t take it anymore. The day of my doctor appointment I was struggling to even drink water. I almost had to pull over on my way to work to throw up water. That is bad.

From my June 15 post, you learned that I had broken my foot and was benched from working out. Because of swelling in my foot, my doctor gave me a prescription of hospital-strength ibuprofen. After my lap-band surgery I was told to never take any painkillers except Tylenol. This is because ibuprofen can cause stomach irritation. Well, me being the doctor I am decided that taking ibuprofen for a very short amount of time wouldn’t hurt anything. I had never had issues with stomach irritation and ibuprofen, so I figured I would be okay. Wrong.

The surgeon adjusted my band and made it looser, which has changed my life. After 48 hours I was able to eat again. My energy was coming back up and I was feeling better … for about two days. It was then I discovered I had developed a dependency on ice cream. I craved it. After a year of modifying my sugar intake and getting a handle on my sweet tooth, I blew it all in one little month. I seriously felt like someone who had earned a year of sobriety and then fell off the wagon. I felt ashamed and embarrassed that I had once been the person praised for such amazing willpower. What happens when you feel guilty about something? Well, in my world it makes me want to eat sweets. Oh yeah, I’m still not working out due to my broken foot. Fail. Fail. Fail all over the place.

Fast forward a week. I had a moment of clarity. Was it really that bad? Sure I hit a few bumps in the road, but it’s not like I gained any weight. Pretty good considering I wasn’t working out and considered ice cream a vegetable for a month. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on all my healthy food and set out on a familiar journey of low-carb eatin’. Did I have ice cream this week? Yes, twice actually. But that’s an improvement, so I’m happy with that. Am I a human being capable of errors? Yes, and some of them are actually worse than screwing up my diet. It doesn’t take genius to see that I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes life is out of my control. I do the best I can with what’s in front of me. If I mess up I don’t let it define all my other decisions. I move forward and fix what I can. Oh yeah, and my foot is feeling a lot better, so I am going to start some light exercising this week.

As I head into another week of improvements, I hope my short comings will make someone feel better. For all those people that didn’t understand my willpower and felt defeated because you couldn’t live up to my achievements, I give you the gift of my screw-ups. Now you all know that I’m not perfect when it comes to eating right. More importantly, I now know I’m not perfect when it comes to eating right. I know I’m strange (for many reasons), but it makes me feel better to know I’m capable of making mistakes and not spiraling out of control.

One Year Ago Today

One year ago I was at Baptist Hospital having lap-band surgery. I weighed in at 287 lbs and wore a size 26. I was officially morbidly obese. I couldn’t go up a single flight of stairs without losing my breath. I never worked out. I didn’t know how to read food labels. I ate pasta, pizza or fast food several times a week. Not a day went by that I didn’t indulge in a sweet treat. I couldn’t fly on an airplane without getting a seatbelt extender. I couldn’t enjoy activities like ziplining or horseback riding because I exceeded the weight limit.  I had a hard time fitting in booths at restaurants. The only had two stores I could shop at regularly. I had high blood pressure.  

Today, I weigh in at 167 lbs. I’ve lost a total of 120 lbs in the last year. I’m a size 10. I work out at least five days a week (not counting the last couple of weeks due to my broken foot). I can tell you anything you want to know about a food label and how to read it. I never buy an item in the store without reading the label to make sure it passes my dietary inspection. I have not had pizza, pasta, rice, soda, a candy bar or bread in the last year. I’ve only had fast food literally a few times, and it’s usually a salad. I have one dessert a week. I have plenty of room on airplanes and in booths, and no longer look at weight restrictions on anything. I shop wherever I want, and get overwhelmed by all the choices. My recent blood work showed perfect health. 

Am I exactly where I want to be? Nope. Will I ever be? I’m not sure. Right now I’m still considered overweight for my height. I should weigh 150 lbs to be a “healthy” weight. I don’t know if anyone is ever truly happy with what they look like. I’m also not sure if I’m any different. Instead of complaining about my weight, I complain about my surgery scars and the extra skin I have. I don’t consider myself a failure for being 17 lbs overweight. I consider myself a success for only being 17 lbs overweight. I’m staying focused on the fact that I lost 120 lbs in a year!

Thank you all for taking this journey with me. I know it’s been a crazy year. Thank you for standing by me as I complained, stared longingly at your food or had to excuse myself to throw up. I truly believe your support gave me the motivation I needed to get through this. I am forever grateful.

I hope you will continue to enjoy my blog. I’ve still got some weight to lose and a lot of life to enjoy!

The tale of how my feet suck

I’m spending my lunch writing this post alone in my office. Mostly because I don’t want to have to repeat this story a million times, but also because I’m feeling a little sorry for myself.

Two years ago I had surgery on my right foot to remove one of my sesamoid bones. 

It started out as a stress fracture, but went untreated for a while. I was so overweight at the time I figured my feet just hurt from holding me up all the time. Eventually the bone shattered into a bunch of pieces. It was in so many tiny pieces that it showed up as normal on an X-ray. It took months of tests to rule out everything from gout to lupus. Finally, an MRI revealed that my sesamoid bone was destroyed. I went off to surgery to have the bone fragments removed and a tendon rerouted to take its place.

About a month ago I started feeling a familiar pain, this time in my left foot. I kept telling myself it would get better. Nope. I went to my doctor today and he confirmed I don’t have a stress fracture, but I have broken a sesamoid bone in my left foot. I went early enough that this one hasn’t shattered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He put me in an air cast and told me to not do anything for the next three weeks. After that he will determine if I need surgery or not.

There was nothing I could do to prevent this from happening. My sesamoid bones are basically defective, meaning I was just made this way. The right one probably broke under the pressure of all the extra weight I was carrying. My left one probably broke under the pressure from exercising all the time. Bottom line is that it would have happened eventually. Nonetheless, it’s heartbreaking to hit this roadblock after working so hard and coming so close to my weight-loss goal. I only have 20 lbs to go. Am I going to take a time out from exercising and gain a bunch of weight?

I don’t know how to take a break from exercising anymore. The longest I’ve gone in the past year without working out at all is five days. Three weeks is an eternity. After that I will either be having surgery or doomed to a bike or the pool. Just like that, I’m no longer training for a half-marathon.

Let the waiting game begin.

Adventures

As most of you know, Eli and I love to travel. We try to take at least two or three trips a year. We figure this is a luxury we won’t be able to enjoy as much once we have children. We budget for our vacations every year, and only have one rule: no financing. All trips must be paid for in full at the time of booking. One trip always includes the beach in another country and the other is usually a little closer to home. This year we got lucky and Dell (Eli’s work) paid for a trip to San Diego in April. The Gatlinburg trip (detailed below) was our second trip of the year. Next stops are Destin in July and a cruise in September. We <3 traveling.

Our third anniversary present to each other was a new Cannon Rebel T3i DSLR camera and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS10 digital camera. The DSLR speaks for itself; better-quality pictures and we can finally take some awesome sunset photos at the beach. The Lumix is cool because it’s a 14.1-megapixel camera, waterproof to a depth of 10 feet, shockproof from falls up to 5 feet, freezeproof to 14 degrees and dustproof. I can take it snorkeling, rafting, drop it and bury it in the snow. Plus, it takes great pictures. This camera came in handy in Gatlinburg.

Gatlinburg was our adventure trip. This marks the first trip we’ve ever taken together that we didn’t plan on sleeping in and relaxing. We had action and adventure planned for most of our time there. It was awesome.

We stayed at the Fun & Games 53 cabin in the woods, courtesy of Alpine Chalet Rentals. It was clean, dog-friendly (Khalie was so happy to join us) and on the side of a mountain. It was a bit of a scary drive to get to it, but well worth the million times I had to remind my husband he was driving a little too close to the death drop.

After our drive in, it was a little too late to start a new adventure, so we headed to the Tanger Outlet Center in Sevierville. We managed to do a little damage at the Lenox (new silverware) and Under Armour (new workout wardrobes for both) stores. We headed to dinner at a familiar favorite, The Chop House, but it did NOT taste like the one in Murfreesboro. Huge disappointment.

We went Ziplining at Wahoo Ziplines, which was way better than Adventure Works in Kingston Springs. We definitely went completely hands-free and upside down on a couple of the highest lines.

Next up was the biggest fail of the trip … tubing down the Pigeon River. While the staff at River Rat was super nice, the tubing itself was very boring. The water was not deep enough and we kept getting stuck on rocks. The lazy river float is not our cup of tea at all.

We decided white water rafting was more our speed and headed to USA Raft. We had originally planned on rafting the Ocoee (thanks to a Groupon deal), but a technical error or their website made us think we were closer that we really were. We decided not to make the three-hour drive and stick close to Gatlinburg. We plan on using our Ocoee coupon soon, though. I know going down the Ocoee would be a lot more fun, but we had a blast on this 1 ½ hour rafting trip. It was a great beginner’s ride, and now I know what to expect next time.

A trip to the mountains didn’t seem complete without a little horseback riding at Smoky Mountain Riding Stables. We opted for the hour ride, and boy am I glad we didn’t sign up for two hours. If you’re not used to riding a horse, it can be, um, a little uncomfortable. It was a lot of fun, except I had a horse that moved kind of slow. Apparently, you’re supposed to kick them in the side to get them to speed up. I refused to do this, because I convinced myself Skippy was moving slow so I wouldn’t get mud splashed all over me.

We didn’t have a lot of time to fit in formal workouts, so one day we decided to hike up to Clingmans Dome. It’s a half-mile pretty much straight up. We saw bears and trees as we passed them, but not a lot more. It was very cloudy, so we didn’t get the million-dollar view promised online, but we got a small workout in just the same.

On our last night, we did a go-cart tour of Pigeon Forge. Basically, we paid $25 per person to ride at five of the best tracks on the strip. Eli and I both frequented the go-cart tracks when we went to Pigeon Forge as kids, so we were excited to battle each other. I would say we are about equal on the track. At least we didn’t get in a huge fight like two extreme rednecks we saw.

It was nice to get away for a few days and a great way to use up a few vacation days that expire in June!