Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘weight’

Loving my body again: A tale of broken boobs

My daughter will be nine-months old on Thursday. When people meet her, there's generally a consensus about how happy she is, how much she smiles and how good of a disposition she has. I'm lucky that at this point in the mommy game, I'm rarely getting asked the question that I was so frequently at the beginning.

"Are you nursing?"

"That's complicated," was the standard and necessary response.

Read more

Making better choices

I’m pretty sure Lululemon did a ton of research when considering the “manifesto” to put on the bags you get at the store and withe everyone online order. I’m currently alternating between a black bag and a red bag for my carrying my lunch to work. I have a lunch bag that keeps things cool, but I now have a refrigerator/microwave in my office at school.

Plus, the Lululemon bags are much cuter than that one.

And it screams “I work out! Yes I do!” to everyone who cares. Which is likely no one at either job.

But I digress.

I saw the featured part of my bag the other day, about stress being related to illness. My first thought: “Oh yeah.”

I mentioned in my somewhat more open previous post that I had a stomach issue that forced me to have an unplanned surgery in July 2010. I’ll explain more.

I had pain. Horrible pain. For about two years, I just kept letting it go. It would come at night mostly. It would hit me hard. I thought it was kidney stones.

Kidney stones run in my family. So it made sense. I had tests run. Lots of test. Lots of uncomfortable peeing in a cup. Yep, I said it.

I had a bunch of blood tests too. Not as many as when I diagnosed with high blood sugar a few years before. But many. No root cause. Nothing that would indicate a condition underlying.

“Perhaps you should consider that the pain is a physical manifestation of your stress,” the doctor said.

“Seriously?” I said, half astonished, half sarcastic.

It was and wasn’t in the end. Surgery proved that.

Still, it made me think.

Stress. Ah, stress.

I’ve spent most of my recent life in some sort of stage of stress. I pushed myself to graduate from college in three years. I’m still not sure how I did it.

In graduate school, I developed an ulcer from the stress of working on my masters project and running, quickly, out of money (thanks Grandma for saving me! If it wasn’t for her unexpected checks here and there, wrapped in tinfoil for a reason only own to her, I wouldn’t have made it to my summer internship in Dallas).

Then I took a job with no time off between it and my internship. And I immediately plunged into wedding planning. For eight months I came home and planned during my off hours from work. Moved into a rental house 25+ miles from my job two days before the wedding. Then had to adjust to the commute.

Then we bought a house.

Stress. Yes. I know stress well.

But last night and today, I officially decided my new mantra is “make better choices.”

In life. In fitness. In my goals.

How did I start? With a strawberry Chobani yogurt for breakfast. A Weight Watchers lunch. And pretzel chip snacks.

I’m getting a little hungry, but I’m making it through.

Today, I start making better choices in general.

That means not going for a run to make a quota, but because my body wants to. Today I slept in and got up and ran eight miles on the treadmill. Every step I wanted to stop (because my legs are more tired than usual), but I didn’t. I kept going.

I started this blog to share my views on running. I’ve been reluctant to really get into anything about my diet or my weight just because I didn’t feel as if it would “fit” here.

Well, it’s my blog and I can complain if I want to. I’m not changing the theme, I’m adding more variety.

It makes sense to me. So I’ve added a category, the first in a long while: “Making better choices.”

So here I start. Today and tomorrow and on and on are about making better choices. I’m hoping to continue my path by going to the store with my husband this evening. We haven’t been for awhile together. Either or the other goes. But when we used to go together, we’d eat better.

I want to start that again.

And it’s a step, right?

It’s not really about the shoes (and other weighty issues)

Today, I bought a pair of shoes. They are a deep teal color and oh so perfect. The moment I put them on, it felt like heaven on my feet. So comfortable. They were $85. And I immediately felt guilty buying them.

It’s not because I’m in debt and the money needed to go somewhere else. In fact, I’ve been making extra payments on my student loans recently in an attempt to get them down. It’s not even because I felt somewhat bad buying something nice for myself.

It’s because buying shoes means something than entirely different to me than it does to most people.

It means I’ve gained more weight than I should have.

I hopped on the scale when I cam home today. I had just eaten. I weighed 174 pounds.

I can’t help but feel like a failure.

Two years ago when I was fed up with my weight I was nearly 200 pounds. I ran my ass off over a four month period, literally. I ate right with the help of Weight Watchers online. My weight bottomed out at 154. For the first time in a long time, I was happy.

My face had thinned (which is good because any weight gain for me automatically means my face balloons). My arms had too. I hadn’t looked that good in years. Really. It was life changing, game changing.

I followed the plan really well until sometime in May. Then, life happened.

My husband and I bought our first home. The day we moved in, I got a call to interview for the part-time position at the college I now teach at. It took us more than three months to settle into our new lives in a new house. For me it meant a somewhat longer commute, now across town before I got on the freeway. Lots of changes.

Then a very unplanned surgery for pain I’d been having in my abdomen for some time. It needed to happen. But I let it go and go until on the days it was bad, every step I took was excruciating. That set my running back for about six weeks. It also was my “fall of the wagon” moment.

I’m ashamed to say, I never got back on.

The two jobs didn’t help. I was crazy taking a part-time job when my full-time job was already stressful.  My diet got way out of whack. I wake up at a different time. My schedule is never the same from day to day. My husband has a hard time keeping track of me.

I have excuses.

Lots.

And I didn’t need the shoes.

I already have lots. (This is only one snapshot of my closest. I have lots and lots of boxes.)

I bought the shoes because shoes are kind of one size fits all. That size for me is an 8 1/2. Whether I gain or lose weight, the shoes will fit. (I have flat feet, inherited from my grandfather along with a predisposition to diabetes).

One size fits all. No matter how round my stomach is. No matter how fat my arms get.

I realized it almost immediately.

Probably because I headed over to Old Navy and started looking a shirts. Specifically a striped shirt. That’s not bright for a girl whose curves now seem over exaggerated and out of focus, wrongly proportioned.

I settled on two shirts that would hide my belly and cover my arms.

And a tank top. Because wearing a tank top under my shirt helps smooth out my belly hanging over my jeans.

I’ve failed myself.

Because this wasn’t the first thing I bought for myself with the same mentality.

A couple weeks ago it was a scarf at Target. I grabbed a bracelet somewhere else.

On payday this week, I bought a necklace.

It’s never about the shoes. There’s something much deeper at work here.

I need to drop those 20 pounds. I need to get back to where I was two years ago. I need to do better.

I need to make better choices.

Because right now I’m buying accessories to avoid buying clothes. I’m wearing cotton shirts and avoiding all other clothes because I need strength and comfort.

I’ve tried and failed in the past three weeks to start back on Weight Watcher again. I keep making up excuses about how I need more food in me to run, how I’ve have no energy if I don’t have the extra taco, etc.

But the truth is, I need to do better.

My wallet will thank me. But my body will too.

Here’s to finding a path back to 154.