2/3 me diary

Congrats on the lost pounds! I can identify with your sleep dilemma, I have that sort of thing happen a lot; it can be really frustrating.

The best part about your lost weight is that you aren't having to struggle to do it. Isn't that nice?
At least I ASSUME you're not struggling. :p
 
This week has not been so great. I was working, and wasn't really prepared for how to do lunch - the things I did organise, like buying some soup, backfired as the soup was foul. Then on my birthday I ate the wrong things, and my period began the next day and was another painful one. The best things for the pain is a full warm belly - sounds like an excuse but it's true. I used to get one or two painful periods a year, but the last two have both been bad. I know periods get worse as you get older, so I figure that this is it for me now. I can get away with one day of heavy eating every three and a bit weeks, but not 3 days - I am going to have to be more reliant on painkillers.

Anyway - birthday season is well and truly over, this period is waning, and I have no excuses now.

Game on.
 
Well, I only gained a pound. And so far this week I have been doing well.

I can look at my progress two ways -

I can say, hey, I only lost 6.5 pounds in 7 weeks, I've gained in two of those weeks, who am I kidding here, this simply is not working, I am obviously never meant to be thin.

And I get those thoughts whispering in my head - but I am choosing not to listen to them. Instead I am thinking wow, I have lost 6.5 pounds over an extremely busy and trying part of the year when I normally gain weight, what a great start! I will not regain that 6.5 pounds.

I have 6 pounds to lose to reach my third target. Now is the time to focus on it, and make moves towards achieving it. I am still feeling stuffed in my clothes - how I managed when there was 6.5 pounds more of me is a mystery, but I know that losing another 6 pounds would make my clothes feel more comfortable.

So, the only thing to do now is to keep walking the walk, keep taking bites off the elephant, keep putting one foot safely in front of the other.
 
just keep walking just keep walking walking wlaking walking walking what do you do when you want to walk you walk walk walk - i love finding nemo - the wise words of dorey except she thinks that you should swim. i disagree - you should walk .. but if you want to swim then you can :D
dont worry about pausing the weight loss for a little while - get back on your horse now and carry on :)
 
Hi Sophie!

I would not have a problem with the way I am losing weight if I didn't have this sneery little voice telling me that I should be dieting harder, losing quicker, and as I am not, I am failing, failing, failing.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am doing okay - you may have noticed!

The main thing that I have excelled at isn't shown by my weight loss - in fact there is no physical way to measure it at all. It's that I have not had a binge for an age. Even when I feel emotional, or angry, my binge triggers, I may give myself a treat, but that does not progress into out of control overeating. I have been working on my binge eating since my late teens, about 24 years now, and there has been minuscule progress made over that time, but this is the best it has ever gotten.

My binges had reduced from eating massive amounts of food that left me rolling in agony in my teenage years, to eating too much food that disagreed with me - very sweet food or very fatty food that left me feeling - well, poisoned. I binged because it gave me emotional relief, and I feel that I might just have got to the place now where I am able to get the relief in other less destructive ways.

All in all I am happy to continue to lose weight at this rate - even if it is less than a pound a week. Just as well I have set myself such small targets! It would be nice to lose more, to be able to wear more of the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, but I have experience of heavy dieting bringing on the binging.

I don't really want to diet anyway, I want to eat properly - healthfully - respecting my appetite, respecting my food desires, and respecting my health.

And writing my motivations down helps. It helps quieten the protests of my lecturing "thou should diet harder!" voice, it tightens up my motivation to keep working on resisting temptation (in the new job there hasn't been a day that someone hasn't bought cakes or biscuits into the office) and I get to reflect on the easily forgotten success that I have had so far.
 
I'm always so inspired when I come read your diary. :p
I'm glad it is motivation for you, but it's ALSO motivating for me, as well. I always feel good when I read about how resolved you are, and you remind me of things like the binge eating. I hadn't even noticed it, but I haven't really binged in weeks, and even then my binges never get over 3000 calories.
You have really helped me feel better about the fish and chips last night, too. I just realized that half a plate of that sort of thing (yes, I was concerned over HALF a serving of Fish and Chips!) is so far ahead of the way I was eating 6 (or even 3) months ago, that it was beyond my comprehension.

Thank you very, very much for the reality check; it's kinda weird that this one didn't bounce! :D
 
Hello Qjay,

What a surprise to find my murblings are helpful to someone, I have been sure that I have bored the pants of people with my firm taking myself in hand talking to myself.

I am glad that I was helpful. I think we all need to celebrate how far we have come as well as to look at the journey ahead.

Well done for the hard work you have obviously put in to change the binging, and whoopeee on the fruits of that work.

Personally I believe that when it comes to food, there's no point regretting what you have eaten - it's done - the next meal is what is important. The negative side of me always wants to go over what I have eaten, with a running inventory of where I have fallen down, where I could improve, and lots of tut tutting. I just plain don't let it, which is why I don't write down what I eat.

I was out on Friday somewhere that was cooking the most delicious looking fish and chips. We had eaten early, so there was no reason to have any, but they did look, and smell, so tantalising. Well done on having only half a portion.
 
I absolutely agree with you about letting go of what's done and moving forward!

We have the rest of our lives to live and to eat - it's not always going to be picture perfect...that's life. We will have to learn to incorporate those less then stellar choices into our lifestyle and that's what we're doing, one day at a time, learning to eat better, more often then not!

Good job on on your weightloss so far!
 
Another pound down. I thought I hadn't done very well this week, and was expecting a gain, so I am very pleased. I still can't get used to the fact that dieting does not necessarily mean pain.

Still learning the best way of sorting out lunch now I am working. lunch has always been the meal I do least well at - possibly because I mostly eat it alone. I have a tendency to snack, and snack some more. Then a bit more. I can never figure out what I really want for lunch, so just have a bit of this, and a bit of that. I must put some energy into writing out a list of possible lunches that I can choose from, and sticking to what I decide to eat.

I planned to swim yesterday, and got my stuff all sorted, and made it to the pool - to find it taken over by a charity swimathon. Though I didn't swim, I did get organised, and was really nervous the whole time. It is a while since my bod has been out in public. I feel that next time will be easier, as I have already made the first move, so next Sunday I want to go swimming.
 
Well, this week - it didn't go well. I was struggling with eating mindfully at the beginning of the week, and then our dog got sick suddenly, and has spent three days in the vets. They think it is cancer, and without the chemo he would have gone pretty swiftly, as his breathing was affected. We began chemo as otherwise the tumor would have strangled him. But the chemo is a 6 month course, and the vets say not to expect him to live longer than 6 months, so I am not sure that we are doing the right thing by the dog by proceeding. Hubby desperately wants to do it though. He keeps saying "lets give him this chance", but the dog is going to die of cancer - whatever we do will only defer that.

So, we have a dog home with stitches and shaved bits, who is not himself, who is on packets of pills, and whose poo and wee is toxic. We have children, and a puppy, so managing the situation is a challenge, mostly down to me as hubby isn't here as much, and I am very doubtful that we should be putting the dog through it.

Anyway, I have not been eating mindfully. There has been some comfort eating going on, and I have not refused the offers of cake and comfort from family and friends when I have told them the news. So, I am 2 pounds up.

As I say I was struggling at the beginning of the week anyway, and am premenstrual as well, but I can still pick good out of the situation. I have not binged - I may have eaten when I was not precisely hungry, but I have not made myself feel sick from overeating. I genuinely did not want to eat when I started feeling full. And I noticed that although I was buying foods that may be unhealthy in terms of the sugar and fat content, they were foods that I like, even foods I love, which is a break away from my normal pattern of buying foods that I dislike, to punish myself I suppose for wanting comfort from food. And twice the foods I wanted to eat were salad.

Anyway, I did not go swimming yesterday, with everything else going on. We cannot really leave the dog this week, and may have to cancel a longed for and long planned weekend away, the first for hubby and me on our own, because the dog's treatment is so intensive to start with.

I imagine I will be wanting to comfort eat a lot.

However, I am determined not to gain any more weight. Life must continue, and I want to lose weight. I have had a few days of letting myself go, but I have done with that now. It is time to get back to work.
 
Oh that sounds so very difficult for you. We kept our last dog after he developed diabetes. That was hard enough. This sounds awful.

It's great to know that you are ready to move forward again. :)

Keeping going is what counts. I really think that being able to start again after a less than ideal time is a must have skill for long term achievement with our weight.
 
Oh lord, did a long post, which died on the way to being published.

Summary: Our dog is coping well with chemo, and the cancer is found to be less developed. he has been given 6 extra months to live.

I have gained 1 1/2 pounds. I am going to focus on my hunger levels, and eating to satisfy hunger, not eating to satisfy my emotions for the next few days.

Too tired to try to replicate whole post!
 
Don't you just hate it when cyberspace steals your work!

Eating to satisfy your hunger is a good restart plan. :) Do you expect to get some exercise too - it can help so much with emotional issues.
 
How are things now? Any chance of an update?

I had to help some friends through a similarly rough patch recently with their cat, and unfortunately they couldn't afford to do anything really effective for the treatment, so they ended up having him put to sleep.
A feisty, old, happily purring and loving, bright orange, tabby who was in a lot of pain and becoming horribly miserable.
They were pretty sad, but he wasn't capable of handling things himself.
I hope things are looking better for you, now.
 
Hi all,

I'm still grieving for that long post – I am now writing in word to copy and paste – at least if I lose the post I can do it again! The dog is still coping really well with the chemo. It’s not all plain sailing, his immunity is shot, and he had a reaction to a jab. Normally there would be a bit of a bump for a while with this kind of reaction, but as he has no immunity, the bump just grew and grew. The vets have drained pus out of it a few times (yuk) and then when that only helped temporarily, they put him on mega antibiotics. That helped a lot for a few days, then the bump began growing again. He’s at the vets having chemo now, so hopefully they will make a decision about it.

I am really not sure how drastic this bump is to his health – but if his body can’t fight the infection off, he could die from something that is normally minor.

As regards the chemo, he is bouncing through it. It’s quite incredible, and he enjoys visiting the vets, which I can only put down to the fuss that they make of him (I have waited in there for appointments and he has a constant stream of nurses and vets petting him), given that all they do there is stick needles in various places. Today’s chemo is the nastiest drug. So, we just wait and see.

Qjay, I think your friend did the right thing for their cat, and if Shadow wasn’t coping as well with the chemo I would be thinking on those lines myself.

Back to me! I gained ½ a pound last week, which is a bit of an improvement on the week before, but still not brilliant. I am doing better at monitoring my hunger, and mostly I eat when I am hungry, but I seem to have one patch every day when I eat for comfort. That is about 4, when I get home with the kids, and they have done their homework. My mind is constantly on the look out for ways of dealing with this – thoughts of starving myself and going back on Lipotrim are discarded daily.

I did remember one thing though. I once lost significant amounts of weight by asking myself a simple question. I asked it every time I was about to eat, and the question was “Is this food for the healthy me, or for the fat me?” I had no strategy set up dependant on my answer, but I found that when I answered the question “for the fat me” I just lost interest in eating whatever it was.

Later after regaining the weight I tried that again, and found that when I answered “for the fat me” I was glum about it, but still ate. However, I am more positive now, and asking myself that question may help again.

As for exercise – well I have not yet been swimming, and that is me wimping out of showing this bod at the swimming pool. There is a similar reason behind not doing much other exercise – I have a bad back, which I need to sort out, but that means stripping to my undies. The original idea was to lose about a stone so that I could go do that without huge embarrassment, then begin more exercise, but I wasn’t anticipating this journey being so drawn out! I can and do walk quite a bit, though I have bad feet too, and need to sort them out. There is absolutely no reason in the universe why I can’t do that, but yet, I have not got round to it. There always seems so much to do, so little time, especially now that I am back at work.

I will make it a priority to get some better shoes so my feet don’t hurt so much so that walking gets easier, and that I do more of it. I am determined to buy a new bike as well - my old one has a frame way too big for me and it is a racer that hurts my back. I need an old fashioned sit up and beg type.

I am not in the good place I was before the dog got sick, but I am closer to it that I was before, and I intend to work hard at regaining that place. I truly believe that none of this effort is worthless whether the scales move downwards or not, as long as I am working on my eating problems.
 
Just keep going 2/3. Keep making good choices and getting back on track. I think the first 10-12 pounds are the hardest. You are very honest. Keep doing the very best you can. What choice do we have really but to do the best we can, eat the best we can, love the best we can?
 
Gaining or losing small amounts of weight is not significant unless you keep doing it, week after week. The impact it has is psychological, far more than physical, because you have to remember that even small changes in diet (like stopping to eat on your way to or from the VET!) can have an impact on your weight, just from simple things like "more salt in your diet" or "an extra snack while you wait" and other things like that. They are small, but more importantly, the are temporary, so you can't let them make you miserable!

Let things settle out for awhile! You're going through a rough patch with you poor puppy in CHEMO and dealing with complications from that, you can't drive yourself mad while you do it. Just take a relaxed attitude toward the weight gained or lost, and try to figure out which comfort foods are worth the potential weight gain, and which ones aren't :p

Just try not to make yourself miserable, you have enough worries right now, just stick with eating right and taking care of yourself and your best friend.
 
Thanks for your kind words. I think the problem I am having is that I feel so guilty - partly as I feel I should have noticed the lump growing under his jaw earlier, and partly for absolutely no reason at all, just that somehow it's down to me that the poor dog is going through this. I also feel that I shouldn't let it all affect me, after all, it's a dog, not one of my kids, or my husband. But you're right Qjay - man's best friend.

I have gone right back to eating secretly - something I have not done in an age.

The only way I know to deal with eating problems is to focus a harsh light on them, turn them over and over, and inspect them. Otherwise somehow I manage to hide what I am doing even from myself - kidding myself that I am eating healthfully.

The dog having cancer is a downer - but it's a normal downer of life. I need to be able to eat mindfully whatever life throws at me - not drop it if something difficult happens. Difficult things are always happening.

I know I can talk the talk, it's walking the walk that I am really struggling with. But there is always tomorrow - having a fierce desire to sort this out has got to keep propelling me forward.
 
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