Here I sit in the comfort of my local Starbucks. Yes. Local Starbucks. I know but when you are a stay at home mom who helps her husband run a home based business, the last place you want to sit and get stuff done is home. At least in this weather. If I could be laying on the deck sunning ,trust me I would not be here at Starbucks. For right now this is my sanity, however it has turned into liquid crack for me . Literally I love and obsess over their espresso drinks, skinny of course.
I hope that when reading this, it finds everybody doing well and carrying on their journeys. I am well. That being said, a few days ago I was NOT so well. Mentally. For two years I have been on this journey, ( I cant believe two years already but when I think of all I've been through yeah two years is about right) and I have been very educated and knowledgeable about what to expect and how to face the challenges that have come up. That has helped a lot, i suggest everyone does research and reads other peoples journeys'. Only a few times have I actually had a mental breakdown. Well, two days ago was one of those days. AND YES it was related to the scale. Let me explain a little before you start to roll your eyes and get annoyed with this on going struggle I have vented about.
Two weeks ago it was 95 degrees here. I went hiking 4 times. A total of 15 miles and it was amazing. I bought friends and family with me each day and I felt great for including them and working on myself. I knew we were heading into bad weather the following week and wanted to have a plan so I over did it a bit to make up for the "shut in status" that was coming the following week. The next week, as planned, it was cold and rained almost everyday. To make up for this, I cut back on all the things I am not suppose to be eating . Carbs ,sweets, whatever. Although I wasn't eating much of those, I didn't want to undo what I had done the week before. I bought my fruit, my yogurts,and even sacrificed dinners after dinners that the family were eating and made better choices for me and my goals, and like planned, the scale was moving down. THEN, we went out with friends. They drank ate, partied it up and I stayed on track. (or so I thought.) We walked for like 6 hours around a casino, but stayed up late and then it happened. I got on the scale the next morning ( forgetting the basic two day rule) expecting it to be down or at least the same AND IT WAS UP. Now nothing crazy. I was still in my 5 pound cushion but for the first time in two years, it was up and I HAD NO IDEA why. I truly felt like it should be down. I was so angry and disgusted, I was going to scream ,cry and never get out of my bed or my sweats again. ( clearly this was momentary insanity because I'm not in Starbucks in my sweats) I ate 1/2 a krispy kreme doughnut that made me Soo sick and it didn't stop there , I ate a small amount of everything through out the day that I had said no too all week,while laying in bed mind you, in my fat pants. I was so angry and felt like "who cares I'll just be fat again. " The ironic thing was ,even if I wanted too, I couldn't eat enough sugar to go on a real binge , this I found very ironic. After several hours of a pity party and face book buddies telling me to knock it off with the scale, I found my mojo again and said "you know what I did have a salad with cheese and it was probably salt blah blah blah " and I got back on track. The pretty dress on my closet door right next to my bed kept catching my eye as well and it was mocking me .
Yesterday, two days after the pity party extravaganza, the scale was back down , that being said I had Chinese shrimp yesterday so no scale weigh in today.
What does all this mean? I hate my scale. Yes. but it also has really made me examine why? Why is that damn number so important. I told one of my friends "who said to stop worrying about it" that if I did that I'd be very over weight again very quickly.
This weight loss is sometimes like a hand full of sand. The tighter you try to hold onto it, the quicker it slips through your fingers. And that is a scary scary thing. To be out of control .To trust the very thing( the scale) that has mocked you your whole life. To have a plan that might work long term and will not let you down is very foreign for weight loss surgery people.
And then I thought about this. When you get to goal and then maintenance. you're almost waiting for the other shoe to drop, as the saying goes. Your waiting for it to fail like so many other things have before. I'm waiting for the weight to come back. That's what I'm waiting for. I'm fighting to keep this result as long as I can because I've never had it before. I almost feel like in some way, I cheated. and I'm waiting to face reality and gain it all back. I know we all get very angry when someone else says we took the easy way out , for obvious reasons, but how many of us secretly think this of ourselves in our own heads.
I am also reminded of a saying I live by. What we fear most we create. I have witnessed this time and time again, and here I am creating my future of failure.
I am trying to make peace with the fact that at my very lowest weight I was 119 pounds. I did not feel good. I was weak and although people made comments like your so thin, you look great, I felt like crap. My cushion of healthy living is 125-130. I am much more often 130 these days then 125 but its 130 and Living. Eating what my family does, with in my parameters and making good choices but not obsessing. Over all it means I'm still 5 lbs under my goal weight and Ive only gained 5lbs in 2 years ..Not like the old days when I'd gain 50 or 60 a year. I don't think having a goal is a bad thing. But I'm trying hard to get back to knowing my body and loving it .Ironically, I loved myself at 275 pounds, in a way I don't know if I'll ever love myself again. Some one said to me maybe your just not meant to be 123 pounds. Maybe your body is meant to be 130 pounds. I don't know how I feel about that statement just yet. As long as I fit in my clothes, (which by the way is what snapped me out of my pity party. A pretty dress hanging on my closet door. ) and I feel good, I'll try and make good choices and pass on the things I know are not good for my nutrition. I'm working on feeling better about the distance I've come and learning this is NOT a diet but a way of life . That is a very hard thing to wrap your mind around after years of dieting. The scale is not the enemy,( a bitch maybe) its a tool and I can accomplish what ever I set my mind too...I hope. and a pity party every now and again is OK as long as you have support to kick your butt back out of it.
Humor
The best gift my husband could give me would be a scale that read my goal weight every time I stepped on it , and NEVER EVER tell me it's fake ....lol...
