How Did That Happen?

Language warning.  

There's a lot of it.  If you're delicate, go to a unicorn fart blogger/TikTok account who lies.  You've got about 7 million to choose from.  I do real in my space.

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Over the years, I've been one of those people who has been able to have pretty much anything in the house without worrying about it.  I could put treats in a bin in the basement or sometimes have them right there and look past them knowing if I wanted something Saturday I could have it.  I hadn't relied on food as a typical emotional crutch in a long time so I thought it was something I had under control.  When Mom got sick, we were able to stick to our usual eats most of the time but sometimes we'd be at the hospital late and we'd get a pizza or fast food here or there because I wasn't going to cook on top of everything we were processing.  When she passed unexpectedly within a month, that urge to grab one or two meals out per week in addition to our usual Saturday was still there.  Some weeks we did fine, some we didn't.  I also noticed that even though my weight didn't move much, the way I was holding weight was changing which I can likely attribute to perimenopause.  Thanks.  So the way my clothes fit me were now more snug in the gut and upper arms.  So I would go up a size "just for this one shirt" if I ordered something or gave the Mr an idea so I could still wear stuff as 'around the house' wear as I worked on my weight.

You throw in starting up the previous year's renovations to get those finished and then realizing it wouldn't make much sense to finish those without doing that tub to shower conversion we'd been mulling and the stress was piling on.  Add to it the system was delayed by 3 weeks later than we were told taking our already later than preferred timeline and moving it uncomfortably close to Halloween, and then they installed it wrong and our timeline was blown out of the water.  This trend of getting one extra day of one meal at Longhorn or Cane's along with eating way more sweets on our usual high cal day was now a 'thing.'  Snacking became more relied on as a coping mechanism and suddenly my 2x wardrobe had somehow inched into 3x's again for roominess.  

How did that happen?  (That's rhetorical.  I just said how it happened in case there are any newbies in the mood to poke the bear.) 

I thought I was handling the grief so well eventually.  I thought I was handling the stress of the reno and it's twists and turns.  Never mind strength training had completely gone out the window and it showed in so many ways.  Being put on statins for the high cholesterol I'd developed was a nice kick in the ass.  I came up with every excuse in the book not to go on them and how I'd finally do what I needed to do all of these years.  Bitch, please!  Just a little over a year before, I was in her office snot crying and begging her to not kill me like my mom's doctor did to her and to do her job.  Now here she was telling me I was going to be f*cked and I was like "I'll take plant sterols and psyllium husk."  

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So I agreed.  You'd think that would've curbed my intake at the holidays in Vermont but it didn't.  I ate crap because it was there and I have a deep rooted issue with food security from childhood so I grew up a member of the clean plate club.  I never went without but there has always been that feeling of having to use every single drop of anything because our dollars had to stretch.  Many nights on the trip this year, I had to sleep sitting elevated from GERD and gorging.  I had this anticipatory feeling of how I should feel with it being the second Christmas without Mom.  I thought I would constantly think "the last time we were here, she was alive."  I thought I would ruin the trip and have no true moments of joy.  When neither of those things happened as often as I thought they should have, then I felt guilty because what a horrible daughter I was to not still slog through it all!  Was I forgetting her?  (Um no, you were literally strapping her around your neck every morning!)  I made her veggie pizza for Christmas Eve, we opened presents we bought each other 'from her' that night that was usually reserved for the three of us.  I still talked to her every night and got signs she was with us but I felt like I wasn't sad enough so my punishment was stuffing myself full of food to fill the shame I felt.  I still think I've tricked myself into believing it didn't happen on some level.  That we just haven't talked in a while and really should catch up.  So yeah, there's a lot of complexities that reared their head while we were gone and I punished myself with saturated fat and no formal exercise.

By the end of the trip, I felt like absolute shit in every way.  I came home to a thoughtful stocking from my friend of my favorite treats that I'm sure were meant to be spread out and savored over a week or two.  Nope.  I split everything with the Mr and we blew through it all out of depression from being home, knowing that in a week our lives were going to go back into chaos again with the reno guys being scheduled to come back and again because I lost that part of me that had self control for so many years.  I didn't recognize myself both in behaviors and now in the mirror anymore.  This feeling of extra weight now sitting on my already blown out groin lymph nodes as my vein doc put it in her flowery way.  "Your poor little lymph nodes are just so tired and smothered right there, they stopped working."  Fuck you.  But really, fuck me.  She just doled out the lymphedema diagnosis like it was telling me I had a head cold but had no idea the lifetime of trauma associated with that term from my mom having it since I was about 6 years old and everything it cost us because it severely limited her mobility.  I didn't have the coping skills to take ALL of that on even with therapy.  It's funny because my therapist pointed out several times "damn girl, you're never just going through one thing.  It's always two things at once and you can't work through either because it is too much to process one much less both so you get stuck!"  

I feel like a newbie.  I've done some research on how I want to move forward but I also know I'm an addict again.  So is the Mr and unfortunately he doesn't like to tell me no so I feel double the responsibility for both of us.  That whole therapy never just one thing again.  That's not to slam him, it's just how it is.  When the Mr found a shortcut our contractors took in November that we PAID for, the urge to say "screw it, let's get Cane's I can't handle this" was strong.  That can't be my default anymore because what mentally felt like an every now and then thing was actually happening a little more frequently than I even realized.  We started losing weight back in the day to prepare for this time in our lives and now it's here and so much has happened I never could've foreseen and I'm not handling it well.  This will be something I talk to my therapist about because she has also lost 100 lbs on her own so I know she knows the struggle.  She was very anxiety ridden like I am and said it made a world of difference for her to address it, so I have many mental things to tackle.  It's so hard and only people who have had weight problems their whole lives really have the right to comment on it because even those few that have lost it and kept it off and are now thin or "normal" to society seem to forget where they came from and like to use the word "just."

"Just eat less and exercise more."  (Literally been proven as a recipe for disaster metabolically when taken to extremes like most people do.)

"Just intermittent fast, it worked for me. (Good for you, my genes and cells aren't the same as yours.)

"Just go on those injectable weight loss drugs.  There's no excuse to be fat anymore with those!"  (You mean the same thing they said about the last miracle class of drugs that gave people heart problems 5-10 years later?  I mean the side effects and horror stories about extreme fatigue to stomach paralysis are right there for you to find.)

"Just...

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How about you piss off with your 'justs??'

It is not calories in vs calories out, myth busted.  Do the research about how truly effed you are because your obese cells remember and basically conspire to keep you that way.  Not to mention the mental portion of each generation.  Mine was "a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips" and immediate self deprecation that is still very prevalent to me to this day.  Just ask the Mr.  I can't help myself when a weight reference is made about something completely not health weight related but I'll still slap my gut or make a comment.  Occasionally he will too.  That crap comes straight from my mom because she was the target audience for the sauna suits, every weight loss gimmick the 80's could push and I was right beside her taking it all in.  

It's a lot.  

You'd think after having lost 226 lbs at my most 'successful'  and still keeping 190 of it off that people would view me as successful or even that I would.  But I don't.  I don't feel good in my skin and the Mr and I have reigned it in and done the exact same things and I will even walk twice as many steps as he does, be religious with my water, eat perfectly and come weigh in day, he's lost two for the week and I lost nothing.  Or in a month he'd have lost 6-8 lbs and I'd be lucky if I lost two.  The mind fuck was so bad I had to stop weighing in for about two months because the mental plunge I took on a weekly basis was too much on top of everything else.  The second I thought "better get back to it", I did fine the first week and second week, he lost and I gained 1/2 pound and was ready to burn the house down.  I know I'm likely fighting another demon with menopause knocking on my door and I didn't ask for that shit but I'm on the pill so technically that shouldn't really factor in that much, should it?  Who friggin' knows.  Certainly not anyone online because you will get 1,798,877 different answers to the same question.  Then when you have 'medical evidence' to back it up in 10 years they change it all and say "whoops my bad, that isn't how it works/that shit killed some people!"

What are we to do?  Who the hell knows but I'm not giving up.  Last week we already threw ourselves back into hard workouts by snow shoeing every day because we had snow available and you've gotta do that shizz when it's here whether your body is ready for it or not.  Ours was not, especially mine, and I had a lot of very sore shoulder nights which led to headache days and some big time leg soreness.  By week's end, I had acclimated though for the most part and we got right back into healthy eating.  We even...gasp...didn't go out to eat Saturday!  There's a first for a while.  We were burnt out on restaurants from the trip and honestly, nothing around here has been SO good that we give that sink in your chair face after we eat it.  I made turkey burgers (breast) and wedge fries for lunch and BBQ naan pizza for dinner and the world didn't implode.  Not gonna lie, we still had a few sweets but I'm not going to beat myself up for that given we were basically having dessert with every meal on the trip.  I will need to plan our Saturday meals Thursdays or something so I can prep it Friday.  I need it to be as ready to go as possible or else I'm going to get really resentful I don't get a day off ever from cooking.  I did some meal prep for lunches this week too to have available during this stressful week so I wouldn't have to either think about what to eat or to not be tempted to use a crutch bowl of cereal I knew wouldn't keep me full.  It did help some and the second they left everyday so far, we've gone straight out to snow shoe so we could get our formal workout over but enjoy nature.  (Last night was epic with gorgeous snow and our final lap in almost darkness.)

So here are my wants and needs going forward.

I need strength training not just to change the shape of my body but because I had a LOT of trouble hoisting my ass up after sledding.  The problem areas were really apparent and pooped in my Cheerios on an otherwise beloved activity.  I like strength on occasion but it's going to be a struggle at first for me to hopefully fall in love with it the way I need to.  I want to start that next week provided they're done with the bathroom.

I need to go barefoot with my shoes to strengthen my feet.  I already have a pair of Lems to start that journey.

I need to reevaluate if Saturdays are even worth it when 95% of the restaurants around here are half assing it but charging us like they're an LA steakhouse while balancing my need for a one day a week break from cooking.  We're already one Saturday in, let's see if we can go for two until we actually crave something which is what they were for when we started doing them over a decade ago.  

I want to get in 8-10K steps between biking and walking and not because I believe it to be some magic number but because if I don't shoot for a number, I have days where I literally can get less than 700 steps in per day.  

I want to clean more.  I have a dust allergy and I collect dust like I own a museum.  I know that sounds sad but it wasn't what I grew up with and keeping a cleaner space will help me get more steps, keep a neat Inn like Pigpen and help me mentally.

I need to get out of a food rut and find recipes that inspire me that aren't complicated.  

I need to replace the crutch food we've used in the form of Healthy Choice and Evol burritos with equivalents I make but I don't like food prep so that's going to be challenging and I may need the Mr's help here and there.  

I need to drink water like I'm trying to win a bet.  I haven't been able to do that this week at all since our only bathroom has been out of commission so no way to wee in front of the help.  I need to make it a priority next week.

These aren't resolutions.  These are non-negotiables that I have to make them work regardless of what else is going on around me or maybe ESPECIALLY for what else goes on around me.  I know that bathroom guys are technically supposed to wrap up tomorrow or Friday but past experience tells me not to make plans.  That is not an excuse to say "eff this, I don't feel like cooking!"  I need my default to eventually be "we're gonna down some turkey tacos and brussels after working out our frustration with a strength training sesh."

I know it's a lot.  I know I can't change everything at once or I'm more likely to change nothing.  Yes, I've seen memories come up of old posts where I have a 'plan' for the coming year and fail myself year after year.  What makes me think this year will be different?

Nothing yet.

Baby steps.  

Thanks for listening and feel free to share if you need something, anything, to change for yourself.  We can support each other if you need it too.

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