Throwing Away the Crutches

Hello all.  This is a vulnerable one.

In case you're wondering about the title, it's not referencing my newly pulled back that occurred while dumping out a bag of mulch Sunday night.  Not lifting it...dumping it.  It's been a week full of back braces and squishy ice packs.  Yay.

Saturday I forced a weigh in, at least for myself.  We basically haven't weighed in since January.  From that point on it was dealing with holiday weight gain and all of our projects (bathroom reno, finishing that reno, carpet installation on the stairs, work instability (still going on) then the never-ending saga with the water coming in on the subfloor/roof hole, etc) so our lives were just fitting in walks where we could when it was cooler.  We actually did that quite a bit until the weather got unbearable.  When I had to go in for my vulvoscopy June 3rd, I accidentally caught a glimpse at my weight and it leveled me.  I was 10 lbs higher than when we came back from our holiday trip where I was up 11 lbs.  It was sobering and that was when we started doing strength training again.  

But as they say, you can't out exercise a bad diet.  It's not that every day was laden with pure crap, we were fine for 5-6 days a week.  But some days it was easier to pour a bowl of cereal, for him it was not weighing his food which he's been meticulous about for years, not planning meals and if we're over our target range (if we bothered to track that day) then oh well, do better tomorrow.  We worked out 4-6 days per week depending on the week but the stress was astronomical.  We thought no year could ever be as bad as the year Mom passed but this one has been giving it ye olde college try.  My body has been overwhelmed with fatigue some days, and given what we've both been going through, our lives have become about distracting ourselves.  Hours upon hours of tv most days which obviously contributes to our fatigue.  We've got another issue in waiting so it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  

After the weigh in, it showed I'd only lost 5 lbs in two months.  I didn't expect a whole lot but I was about 3 lbs above where I thought would be my worst case scenario.  Working out 5 days a week got me just over 1/2 lb loss per week.  I wanted to cry but didn't even have it in me to do that.  We went out for the day but that number still haunted me so I went back in my one happy year journal.  (The Mr even said the other day, "I don't know why we call these one happy year anymore."  I swear the year we started doing them everything just went to crap so it's been like the farthest from the intention.)  I knew we had thrown in an extra restaurant lunch here or there in addition to our usual high cal day and I thought I wrote them down.  Only once or twice so I was clearly hiding it from myself as well.  I went back to the credit card statements for the past two months since the doctor's weigh in.  My suggestion when I didn't feel like cooking would either be Raising Cane's chicken fingers (Caniac of course, never the smallest one) or Longhorn Steakhouse with no butter sauce on the steak.  A quick look back showed between the two places as well as Mom's birthday where we got her favorite dish from Olive Garden, was 8x.  Eight times in two months we said 'eff it' or justified why it was okay or had something come up and needed a quick dinner because someone was coming within a new window we were given.  It was like adding an extra high cal day, or close to it, to every weekend.  It's not like we didn't know what we were doing, we just didn't care anymore.  Life had beaten us very firmly about the head and heart and sometimes the best you can do is survive...whatever that looks like for you at the time.  

What we do know is it's time to throw away the crutches.  That major weakness that we brushed off as a "we don't do it that often" thing when we clearly did and didn't realize it, can't be an option in everyday life.  I will need to have lunches ready in the freezer or something to pull out and heat up on Sundays or at minimum have a clean kitchen by Sunday morning because if I walk in and see there's no counter space then it's easy to justify saying screw it and that cooking falls on me.  I also have to not allow myself to buy cereal anymore.  If I don't feel like heating up or making a lunch *dumps Honey Nut Cheerios into bowl* and that's that.  Note I didn't say pour myself a serving because we all know those are miniscule and by the time I fill my cereal bowl, I may have 2 1/2- 3 servings meaning about 450 calories with little nutritional value overall especially where protein is concerned.  Until I can trust myself to do the right thing with it in the house, I can't do it.  I know it sounds so easy to people who don't have this problem but for those of us who do, compare it to any other vice.  Drinking, drugs, etc except you actually need your vice to live but have to moderate it instead of use it to numb pain and stress.  Oh and the bonus of it being the last acceptable prejudice to openly mock a fat person so, yay?

Now we've got a potential situation we're dealing with and cutting out stress is going to a be must and honestly, we don't know how to live any other way than putting out fires for about the last 10+ years.  Cutting out superfluous stress has always been the goal but a major life overhaul needs to happen or I don't think either of us will see 60.  We've both said it's killing us and we feel it to our core.  I know that's disappointing to a lot of you Spark peeps who used to look to us for inspiration.  How we were always on the same page and supportive of each other.  How we could buy a not so healthy food for a future date and not obsess over it until we give in and eat it early.  Those people never dealt with what we have and at this point I would love to have the old us to look up to.  Maybe I should look over the Spark blogs I downloaded before they shut down the site.  Then there's the fear that it would make me feel worse about the failure I've become not just to you but myself and to the Mr. 

We're still trying to formulate a plan that's excuse proof but it's also hard to do when you're in the beginning and the chance of relapse is high.  We've stuck to strength training 3x week even with babying an injury which I'm proud of and we have to keep it up.  Our biggest weakness is each other.  Who doesn't want to do the least amount when you feel beaten down and who doesn't want the yummier thing over the thing you eat all the time?  Food ruts are real and no one prepares you when you're a kid that part of that adulting thing you're so anxious to take on is figuring out WTH is for dinner every day for the rest of your friggin' life!

I know we have it in us to do this.  We've done it before but as weird as it sounds, when your mom isn't there to be proud of you anymore, in these early years without her, it feels like "who cares?"  We used to and now we just have to care enough to make ourselves proud somehow and it's hard. 

Feel free to share your struggles as well.  I feel like we've all gotten so disconnected as a society and even our little community sometimes that we feel like everyone else is doing great or at least better than we are while many of us suffer in silence.  Swirling.

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