How I Met Lois

As I began to realize that I needed to talk to someone about this bingeing issue outside of my home, I called a nutritionist/social acquaintance that I had met with a couple of years ago. Her name is Diane.

Diane is the first person who ever suggested to me that I had a disordered view of eating.  Up to that point I always assumed that since I was overweight I just liked food more than the average person and therefore, that explained the large quantities of food I consumed on a regular basis.  Apparently that is not that case. 

Anyways,  she recommended Lois to me.  She said that Lois is her go-to person for her eating disorder clients and that she is awesome.  Before I could chicken out I called Lois and set up an appointment.

We had our first meeting a couple weeks ago and I was absolutely petrified on her drive to her office.  Would she think I was crazy?  Would she just she me as some fat girl who needed to put down the cheeseburger and get a grip?

Thankfully she was neither of those.  She was wonderful and calm and acted as if I was not broken beyond repair.  She offered me neither false hope of an easy road nor made it seem as if I was so far gone that there no light at the end of the tunnel.

I am not naive enough to believe that there is not a long and rocky road ahead of me, but I am feeling a sense of hope that has not existed in a very long time for some peace in my mind and heart and that is good enough for now.

The Corsage.

One of the things I am beginning to realize about my life as a food addict is that much of it is lived in a fog.  Everything is about the food.  When can I have more.  What can I have.  What can't I have.  Will people notice me eating.  Will someone see me sneaking food.  Did someone see me at that drive thru.  And all that time and energy doesn't leave much time for other stuff. 

Like friends. 

Or family. 

Which brings me to today.

Today is the annual father daughter dance at my daughter's school.  And because I am not in a food induced stupor/depression, I was clear enough earlier this week to call a family friend who owns a local florist and ask her to make a corsage for my husband to give my little girl tonight. 

I stopped by her house this morning to pick it up and when I looked at it, I sat in my car, in her driveway and broke down in tears.

Sobbing.

From the sparkly ribbon with the rhinestones, to the shiny slap bracelet, to the glittery flowers, this corsage screams my daughter's name at every turn.  I was overcome by so many emotions and thoughts.

Such as:

How ridiculously blessed we are to have friends who know and love my daughter like this woman.

How spunky and full of life my sweet girl is and how I never want to miss that in light of her weight.

How the food fog usually keeps me from thinking of things like special flowers for school dances.

How I want to be present for my life, not watching from the sidelines with a snack in my hands.

They may just look like flowers, but today they were so much more.

My life with Ed.

I have met the most amazing lady.  Her name is Lois.  And she introduced me to Ed.  He is not amazing.  He sucks to tell you the truth. 

Let's back up though. 

Little things have been leading me to face the fact that I am not only someone who eats a lot.  I binge.  More specifcally, I am a binge eater.  I have binge eating disorder.  And for the first time in my life I feel like there is hope for recovery. 

This looks different than losing weight.

This looks different than being strong.

This looks different than dieting.

This looks like recovery.

This looks like honesty with myself and others.

This looks scary.

This looks like hope.

This is the beginning of looking at my life with Ed.  With the help of Lois, my new counselor.

Daily me.

In an attempt to be more faithful and to celebrate the little things, here is a pic of me from yesterday.  Please excuse the messy bathroom.

I was headed to my daughter's school where she received an award for character. I have to remind myself often that even though I wish she weighed less that she is an amazing kid.  Even if she were to stay this way her whole life, my hope would be that she would love herself and not let her weight keep her from experiencing life (like her mom). 

I rarely dress in anything other than jeans and a top, but I also know that when I feel better about myself, my eating is not as destructive.  Likewise, the more my self-care goes downhill, so do my food choices.  So, I'm dedicated to making more of an effort and convincing myself that I am worth it.  Still in a fake it 'til you make it mode, but anything is progress. 

Where I am today.....

Where I am currently.  Truthfully, I am currently all over the board.  But kinda in a good way.  For the first time in my life, I am slowly working on taking a good long look at the "why" of my eating issues rather than just being worried about the number on the scale.

As a family, we are going through the Trim Kids eating plan again.  The weight started at 270.3 on January 2nd and is slowly, slowly heading downward.  The best news is that I am 6 days binge free.  But more than that, thanks to these things called blogs, for the first time ever, I am starting to feel not alone. 

I have been reading multiple posts written by binge eaters and have seen myself in their words so clearly.  I could have written these things.  That is my life.  There is more to it, but that is for another post and more thoughts. 

On a final note of my current state, I have attended a couple of Overeaters Anonymous meetings.  A good friend of mine has made amazing progress emotionally and physically in the last year and seeing the change in her, not in her weight, but in HER drew me to go and check it out.  I am currently keeping an open mind and still kind of in the checking it out phase. 

All I know is I can not live like this.  This can not be my life.  Period.

Screams in the Silence

That silence that has existed since I last blogged?  That's not silence at all.  It's screaming actually.  It's the sound of failure.  Not just falling off the wagon, but jumping off.  With both feet.

The last two months have looked like this: eat, eat, binge, binge, eat, eat, eat, binge, eat, binge. 

Like crazy amounts of eating.  I feel like I'm on a roller coaster that is spiraling out of control and I just want to grab onto something steady and it's not happening.  The ability to regain control is just out of grasp. 

But it needs to stop.  The scale said 261.9 this morning.  So instead of my Christmas present to myself being a weight in the 220's which I was well on the way to accomplishing, I'm committed to seeing 25-something on Christmas morning.  That will have to be success for now.

Grrr......

Trusting the plan....

This week has been sort of a strange one.  As the sidebar shows, my weight is continuing to decline. (Yippee!)  I am starting to really notice the change and others are starting to see it as well. 

But then came this week.  I weighed Saturday and was super excited.  Then, throughout the last few days, my weight had gone up about 2.5 pounds.  It threw me for a loop because honestly, I'm tracking every bite of food.  I rarely go over my daily points and have used few weekly points also.  My mind kind of started to freak out. 

My first instinct?  "Screw it.  I'm eating."  Thankfully, I didn't follow my first instinct.  Instead, I have repeated the mantra "Trust the plan.  Trust the plan."  to myself A LOT.  I was able to hold my self-destructive habits at bay and trust the fact that if my points were in line, that eventually the scale would right itself and everything would be fine. 

And wouldn't you know it?  This morning, my weight was back where I started at last Saturday.  So, while this probably won't be a stellar number weight loss for the week, I survived the chaos and did not binge or completely self-destruct.

I'm now 76 days binge-free!  100, here I come!!!

Progress, Round 2

250 lbs

 

 

Don't you just hate when....

You are making dinner and it turns out terribly.  Not because the food or recipe was bad but because everything that could go wrong went wrong while you were making it.  Yeah, that was tonight.

Our menu for the evening was Oven Baked Fish Sticks, Spaghetti Squash (with pancake syrup, butter, and cinnamon...yum!), and a fruit salad.  Well, I burnt the fish sticks because the squash wasn't cooking as fast as I thought so I ended up leaving the fish in too long.  After all that, I didn't cook the squash long enough so it was still crunchy.  And it's the end of the week and I was out of most fruit, so we ended up with applesauce.

The thing about eating on plan consistently is that there isn't a lot of extra food consumed.  So when I have a meal, I am seriously looking forward to it.  Tonight's dinner of burnt fish sticks and a container of applesauce was not exactly scrumptious. 

Oh well, life goes on.  I'll do better tomorrow. 

And, oh yeah, 61 days binge-free!!  I am rocking this thing!!

Progress, Round One

Still at it....

Yep, I'm still here!  And unlike most blog hiatuses, I have not fallen off the wagon.  Woohoo for that.  As you can see from the sidebar, I am currently down 20 pounds since we started HFA.  My little girl is down 4.6.  And we are actually still having a great time.  Having all of the meals planned is making food choices simple.  I don't always follow each day perfectly, but rather mix things up throughout the week.  The recipes are pretty yummy so that always helps too.

We are back in school now.  Which makes it a little harder for Mommy because there is no one but me around to make control decisions on what I eat.  But so far so good.  My cravings are tapering off and I feel satisfied with what I do eat. 

And, oh yeah, I'm still binge free!!!  For 42 days!!!  This is my longest streak of being binge free since at least 2007.  Maybe even longer.  And it feels amazing. :)

Hello, Reality

Our "Healthy Family Adventure" is continuing to go great.  It seems so random though that meals out are scheduled into their plan.  That's good I suppose, but it still was strange today to tell my daughter that a hamburger and fries at a fast food joint was our "planned" lunch.  :)

We ended up at McDonald's and we each got a cheeseburger Happy Meal.  I like their new ones.  It came with the burger, a very small serving of fries and a pack of apple slices.  We both got iced tea to drink.

Once I came home, I logged onto WW to enter my points.  They did not have the new style happy meal listed so I went searching for the nutrition info on the Mickey D website.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that our lunch was right around 400-450 calories.  That's awesome!

What I also discovered is a nifty "meal builder" tool on their site.  You just click on the food and "add" it to your meal.  Then, it gives you the nutrition info for your meal.

Let's back up a little.  McDonald's is one of my go-to binge spots.  I love their food ( I know, most people don't.)  One of my favorite things to do was wait to drop my daughter off at kindergarten so I only had my little boy, and then go get ridiculous quantities of food from there, come home and sit on the couch, and eat all of it.  By myself.  With no other eyes to see and no one to know. I shudder thinking about it and hate to admit it, but it's the facts.

Out of curiosity, while on the site today I built a meal with all the food that I normally would get there on a binge trip.  The total made me sick to my stomach.  I'm not stupid.  I knew it was a lot.  But seeing the total was mind boggling.  Ready for it?

2600 Calories.
347 grams of Carbs.
105 Fat Grams.

105!!!

That's nearly 2 days worth of calories!!! 

Some weeks, I would go there twice a week to order that.  And then wonder why I was physically and mentally sick for the rest of the night and most of the next day.

There are no words.  The numbers speak for themselves.

HFA: Week Two Wrap-up

We did it!  We have completed two whole weeks.  Only 10 more official weeks to go!  On top of eating all the menus recommended, this also marks 14 days of no bingeing for me.  That's my longest stretch in probably the last 6 months.  No days where I am feeling sick, guilty, etc. 

An added bonus is that I haven't been having any real cravings.  I'm chalking that up to beginning excitement as well as eating balanced meals at regular intervals.  I'm usually still feeling fairly full and satisfied from one meal when it's time for the next.  Which is great.  I'll take all the help I can get. 

As for the weigh in, my weight this week was 267.4.  For a grand total of 11.4 pounds lost.  Not too shabby and I am proud of that.  But I still don't feel like it's too much of a victory when I'm still 10 pounds up from where I was just 2 months ago.  So onward and upward, right?

My daughter!  She is doing amazing. She lost another 1.1 pounds this week for a total of 2.9 pounds gone.  It doesn't sound like much, but you can honestly see a difference in her shape already.  She carries most of her weight in her stomach and it is getting smaller after just those few pounds.  She is still handling the food really great.  Not every meal is a home run, but she isn't asking for food all the time and she has been trying the new things pretty well.  I'm thinking that she is feeling pretty satisfied most of the time also.

Looking forward to week 3!!

HFA: Week One Wrap-Up

We did it!  One week down, twelve to go on the program.  A lifetime after that, but one step at a time for now.  Our first week was quite a success.  I lost just over 7 pounds and my little munchkin lost 1.8.  Her "goal" for the twelve weeks is 9 pounds. 

The best thing about the book/program is the meals they have planned.  I typed each day's food up as a menu in the morning and then hung it on the refrigerator.  My daughter loved being able to see what she would be eating each day and it kept me from being lazy about meals.  When I walked to the fridge, there was our guide for the day and it kept things very simple.

Because this is a kids' program, the food kinda feels like I'm back in elementary school.  At first we joked about it, but then I started thinking.  Maybe they're on to something.  Simple, balanced meals.  Nothing too heavy, nothing really flashy.  Just food to fuel the body.

Most of the dinners went over well.  The only night that was less than fantastic was the beans and rice night.  My daughter doesn't care for rice so she didn't eat much which left her hungry after dinner.  Also, I thought I had cooked enough beans but there were barely enough for all of us to eat the allotted amount.

The biggest thing I think I have learned this week?   In an effort to keep my daughter from gaining weight, I have actually been underfeeding her.  I mean, she's obviously getting calories, but as we made the menus this week, she would choose one of the 3 items that were typically offered at breakfast and lunch.  She was quite surprised each day when I told her that she could all of that, not just choose one.

Looking forward to next week!

Healthy Families Adventure

Well, my two month hiatus has not been kind to me.  I have regained basically all of my weight since May.  My trip was amazing and I enjoyed every bite of food that I had, but I just never got going again after getting home.  Since May 13, my weight has continued to climb back up.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but my 6 year old daughter is also very overweight.  She was a normal weight up until about 3 and then she started to grow and grow.  As of right now, she is 84 lbs and a "healthy" weight (per BMI scales and what not) would be around 47-51 pounds. 

When I see those numbers, I just want to curl up in a ball and cry.  My biggest fear in my entire life is that my children will spend their life battling weight just like me. 

Everytime we have brought it up with the doctors we are told the same thing.  Cut back on sodas, limit fast food, less juice, etc.  Those aren't really our problem.  She has never even tasted soda and doesn't like juice.  We are guilty of the fast food about twice a week, but even that isn't all the excessive compared to some families. 

Nevertheless, we have not taught her portion control, because we don't follow it either.  Also, she likes all the sweet, rich, yummy foods that her parents partake in. 

We decided that this summer we would sign her up for a bunch of activities in hopes of getting her moving and possibly see a few pounds come off in the these months.  Her schedule has consisted of 4 days a week of swim team practice for 1.5 hours each day, dance once a week for 2 hours, and children's theater 2 days a week for 2.5 hours each day.  The result?  She has gained 2 pounds since school got out. 

Upon learning this, we finally decided that it was time to step up as a family and do something about this.  I did some research and found a book called TrimKids.  It is based upon a pediatric weight management program out of a university in Louisiana.  It comes with a somewhat structured exercise plan, 12 weeks worth of menus, and parent advice. 

So, starting this Monday, my husband, daughter, mother, and myself are officially doing a "Healthy Families Adventure".  My daughter came up with the name after I talked to her about us eating healthy and spending more time moving around as a family.  We did not tell her that she was on a diet, but we did talk about how our bellies aren't supposed to be as big as they are.  And that good choices and lots of playing and exercise with help our bellies get smaller.

We will weigh in once a week.  I am following the menu set forth in the book and also tracking my food on WW.  So far, my food falls pretty perfectly in line with my points.  Most days, I am actually under by about 2-3 points. 

Starting weight: 279 pounds

Weigh-In Day No. 16

It has been another great week.  I was hoping to be back at 260 before I left for my trip on the 12th. I have exceeded that currently, so any loss next week is just icing on the cake. ( Or padding for the cruise.)  Sometimes, I get so frustrated at myself that I basically wasted my time from the end of January until now.  This is exciting today, but the truth is, I was here 3 months ago and then just messed around.  Oh well, can't change that now.  I guess I should just look at it as at least I'm still trying.  I could be 20-25 pounds up in 3 months.  So, I guess still being here is a good thing.  In a way.

Anywho, today also marked my first weigh-in for Weight Watchers.  As with here, the loss was 4.8 lbs.  And I lost a daily point.  That's okay.  It's a good exchange for a lower weight in general.  The plan was pretty easy to follow this week.  I've done WW before with the original Points system so this hasn't been a huge adjustment.  It's hard to say how well I did on using my daily points because last Friday I had to have a wisdom tooth pulled on emergency notice.  As a result, my food for Friday-Sunday looked like "milkshake, refried beans, mashed potatoes, smoothie, ice cream"  Not exactly a model diet, but I did stay within my points each day.  I used 5 weekly points last week also. 

This week should be a better indicator.  But for now, yea for 4.8 lbs. gone!!

Before Pictures, part one

One of the wonderful and horrible things about digital photos, is that I tend to quickly delete all of the truly hideous photos of myself. Therefore, I don't have all that many pictures from my terrible times. That being said, I do still have some. Here are a few from the last couple of years. These should probably be labeled "Should Have Been A Wakeup Call" photos.

 This picture was taken in May 2010. My son was about 5 weeks old and I weighed around 250.

 This picture is from December 2010 when I weighed between 290 and 300.  This is honestly one of only 2 pictures from this weight.  Those are a 24 pant and I could barely button them.

This picture is from July 2011.  I had actually lost about 15 pounds at that time and thought I was looking better.  I cried when I saw the pictures from this day.  I weigh about 265 here.

Weight Watchers

Last week, I signed up for Weight Watchers online.  This is the culmination of a couple of months of thinking. And a few reasons.

#1. I have been reading so many inspiring blogs these last few months and many of those lovely folks follow the WW plan.  I thought that maybe I would enjoy it too.

#2. I haven't really been tracking my food or calories and their online tracker makes it soo easy.  I have had success with WW in the past and know that it works.

#3. This is the big confession.  For the last few months I have been researching and contemplating gastric bypass surgery.  I am so over this weight thing.  So many days, 100+ pounds to lose just feels like a mountain I will never get over.  I know that surgery isn't a magical cure, but it would get me down to where I could go on with life much sooner.  I have oscillated so much on my thoughts that I just can't decide that it's for me.  Also, my weight is totally borderline.  The BMI cutoff is 40.  Mine is 39.  Do I really want to gain weight to have weight loss surgery?  Am I that off?  Given that my insurance requires proof of participation in a 6 month weight loss program to approve surgery, I decided that I would make that choice myself.  6 months of WW.  Full commitment.   At the end of that time, I will reassess my decisions. 

All things hopeful, at the end of these 6 months I will have lost a noticeable amount of weight and gained the faith in myself needed to power through to my goal.

Here's looking forward to October 25th.

Weigh-In Day No. 15

That's more like it.  Much more work to do, but I am feeling so much better after this week.  I am choosing not to dwell on the time wasted, but to focus on what I do from here on out.  I leave for vacation on May 12th.  I would like to at least be back in the 257-259 range by then if only because that's what I weighed when I bought most of my clothes for the trip.  I realized that even back in that 265-270 zone they don't fit in a comfortable way.  The goal seems totally doable.

Now, after my 9 day trip (which includes a 7 day cruise), I may be starting all over but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

An Unexpected Cost of Obesity

I'm used to dealing with the things that being obese costs me.  Like on a daily basis actually.  But today, I faced a $$ cost from my high weight that I did not expect. 

Just after Christmas a year ago, I finally decided to take off my wedding rings.  I knew they were too tight, but they were still bearable and so I kept wearing them.  They finally reached a point that I could feel the sensation changing in my finger.  On the morning I attempted to take them off, it hurt so badly and ripped so much skin off in the process that I had wounds that were still healing months later.  I figured that at least I hadn't needed to cut them off.  But it was very close.

Since that day, I have gone ringless.  It hasn't bothered me too much, but sometimes I really miss them.  Last weekend, during my women's retreat, a friend was talking about how she takes pride in her rings and the symbol that they are of her commitment.  When I looked around, all these ladies were wearing their wedding rings.  None of them were overly flashy or very large.  But they were on.  And they meant something.  When I looked down at my hand, all I saw was my fat finger.  I decided that it was time to get them sized and get them back on my finger.

This morning I went down to the jewelry store and had my rings and finger sized. The rings? A 7 3/4.  I had them sized down when I lost weight in 2007.  My finger?  A 9 1/4.  No wonder I can't get them over my knuckle. I went ahead with my request and was told I could pick them up on Wednesday.  That was the awesome part.  The not awesome part?

It will cost me $234 to have them sized up that much.  That is the cost of inserting extra gold, sizing them, and having them re-flashed.

Most days the cost of my weight is emotional.  Today, it hit the wallet hard.