The Creation of Me

I'm not exactly sure where this is going. I guess we will see when we get there. This morning my pathway to this blog piece was much clearer than it is right now, but that is what having to be interrupted by an IEP, two loads of laundry, dishes, and cleaning the house will do to a creative process as well as a mental plan. It's fine though. I will muddle through and take you along for the ride. Shall we?

So let's go back to the beginning. In my best Sophia voice, "Picture it. It was 1960's Wichita." My mother was so thin, even after having me, her first baby, that she could almost blow away in a strong gust of Kansas wind. To look at her, she was thin and beautiful and you would think that she came from some pretty impressive genes. That would later prove to be incorrect...for her anyway. 

My mom was the youngest of 11 kids. They were all farm kids, full of unpasteurized cows milk, farm fresh eggs, garden-fresh fruits and veggies, their own home butchered meats, and not a processed item in any food they ate. Of course, there was also a fair amount of DDT, asbestos, and other farm chemicals floating around, that they had no idea would prove to be deadly later on, but at the time, except for some asthma and an aunt with a heart ailment due to rheumatic fever, they were a healthy bunch, but they had no idea what genes and environmental issues were doing to their bodies or what the outcomes might someday be. 

My grandmother was a short woman at 4'11" who after all those births, held a little weight. My grandfather was a tall thin man reaching about 6'2" who never put on much weight his entire life. Grandma in her later years suffered from heart issues and strokes, most of which she fully recovered from, until her last one. The one that took her life. Grandpa also ended up with heart issues and this was what took his. 

Their kids came in all shapes and sizes, my mom being 5'4" and the tallest girl to my aunt who like her mom, was also 4'11" and the boys ranged from about 5' 9"  to about 6'2". In this mix of 11 kids, there turned out to be everything growing and mutating in their bodies from multiple forms of cancer, to lupus, to heart disease and aneurysms. Funny though, while some died as early as their early 60's, others hit their 90th birthday, and then some. We also learned that our family had a nasty little genetic mutation called the Lynch Syndrome Gene which is a cancer gene. If a parent has it, there is a 50/50 chance their children will also have it. It has wreaked quite a bit of havoc in my family as a whole and in my immediate family as my mom had it and it was believed to be the root of her four primary cancers throughout her body. She also had Lupus Erythematosis and with the combination of Lupus and all those cancers, it is a true miracle that she lived as long as she did. 

So why this genetic history of my family? Because I am learning that genetics, environment, hormones, societal norms and views, emotions, physical activity and everyday habits ALL have a huge effect on who we are, our emotional and physical health, and how we look and feel about ourselves. Some of this we can control and some of it we can't, but sometimes what we can't control seems to overwhelm and confuse us to the point that it seems to outweigh what we can. 

I have started this blog piece (or likely pieces) with my mom because she created me in more than one way. She created my very being, blessing me with the good, the bad, and the ugly of my genetic makeup, but she also created my eating habits, health habits, and my view of myself and my body. Don't get me wrong, my mom was an amazing mom, but like most women of our modern world, she too was not immune to magazine models, social persuasions, and the constant advertising of what the perfect woman should look and act like. So on that note, let's get back to the 1960s and my mom. 

My mom was an RN and for a while, a single mom. Being a working woman AND a single mom in the 1960s were definitely not social norms so with both of them came a certain amount of stress. At that point in my mom's life, stress was better than any diet pill that could have ever been on the market. Where most of us eat our stress away, Mom dropped 10 pounds in three days when she was stressed. She simply couldn't eat at these times which meant that at 105 pounds on her 5'4" frame, she really couldn't get a whole lot thinner and not get sick. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with Lupus (something even most doctors at the time knew little if anything about) so throw that into the mix and while Mom had the appearance of the willowy thin Twiggyesque models of the time, her body was anything but healthy. 

As the 1960s wore on, Mom got married, but it wasn't particularly a happy marriage and soon she was pregnant. The funny thing about Lupus and pregnancy is, that often the second you conceive, all of your symptoms go away. There is a small percentage of a chance that when the baby is delivered, the Lupus will go into remission. This was not the case for my mom. Her Lupus symptoms did in fact go away during her pregnancy, but her pregnancy was not particularly a pleasant one with all the things going on in her life and the stress took over. She lost tremendous weight and her health took a major hit and she got extremely sick with strep throat. The delivery was no picnic either as she had a reaction to the epidural which nearly killed her, the cord was wrapped around my brother's neck which nearly killed him, and the second she delivered, not only was the Lupus back, but it had affected her kidneys causing her to have Glameral Nephritis. Her kidneys were not good for the rest of her life. 

So stress, Lupus, and an unhappy marriage not to mention two kids weighed heavily on my mom and it affected everything from her hormones to her emotional well-being, and her physical health. Through it all though, she tried hard to be a good mom and one thing she learned from her mom was to feed her family well. As a kid though, I don't remember food being a focal point in our life. Maybe it was because there was just too much else going on. In fact, I remember being a rather picky eater who made my parents crazy, as I could out-stubborn them every time when they insisted I eat a food I didn't like. Flaked hominy comes to mind and I, as a very young child would go on a days-long hunger strike before I would touch that icky stuff. Because of this, I was a pretty small child and I was just slightly underweight for the first few years of my life. 

My brother and I were also asthmatics at a young age and allergic to many things in our environment. Often our asthma would send us both into all sorts of infections along with bronchitis and pneumonia, causing us to both be on a plethora of antibiotics and steroids. What doctors were thinking back then, I don't know, but changing our diets wasn't at the top of their lists. They treated it all with medications and some of those medications were tough on our little bodies.  

In the early 1970s, my mom and dad were finally divorced but dad was still a fixture in our lives which I know was tough on my mom, as he was not particularly kind to her. It was at this time, two things happened in my life that changed my outlook on food and myself and that I have continued to struggle with throughout my life. 

At this point in time, my mom was in her mid to late 30s and her hormones and body were starting to change. No longer did stress take the weight right off of her, but instead, it started causing her to gain weight. Part of it too was likely the fact that she became a foodie and spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking. It was also the dawn of fast food and often it was easier for mom to get pizza or burgers than it was for her to think about cooking a full meal. Suddenly our bodies were taking in a lot of carbs, fats, grease, processed food, and sugar that they hadn't before. This was also when diet Pepsi hit the market and we drank diet Pepsi like it was our job. Gone were the days of well-planned and balanced meals. They had been replaced by Mom's emotional eating and our newfound love of fast food, sugar, and artificial sugar. So that was thing one that changed me! 

Thing two that changed my world was the fact that I was at that preteen stage of life where I was about to start my period and become a full-fledged teenager. My body held some baby fat, but it was no more or less than any girl at my stage of life, even with our newfound less-than-stellar eating habits. I was an active kid and left to my own devices, my body would have likely self-corrected and been perfectly fine, but Mom took me to a new pediatrician who had different ideas. He told my mom that I was on the heavy end of what I should weigh and that if I wasn't put on a diet right then, I would likely get fat. What was worse, he said it in front of me and fat-shamed me right there in his office. A part of me immediately shut down that day. No one I even knew was fat and yet this doctor had basically told me that I was headed down that path. I was devastated. I thought I must somehow be strange and defective. Now mind you, I was not fat and at 11 years old, that thought should never have been put in my head, but it was, and it was also put in my mom's head. She immediately felt like a failure mom for causing me to be fat (I am sure this was in part due to how she was feeling about her own body at the time) and I immediately lost all sense of my real self and saw myself only as this fat creature that the doctor had created in his office that day. Sadly, I have never looked at food or myself the same way since. If only that doctor knew the life-long damage he caused me that day and likely caused others just like me with his incorrect conjecture and his insensitive words. If only. 

(There is a story I am telling here and it will be continued in installments. This was the first installment and I hope that you will continue reading the future installments. I am thinking that some of you will see yourself in parts of this, learn as I am learning and before all is said and done, understand that true change is the only constant in our lives. Until next time.) 

Soda, Diet Soda and Your Health

Some of you call it soda. Others call it pop and still others call it coke, but whatever you call it, we all know that it is delicious and that whether it is full-sugar or diet, it is simply NOT good for you. 

When I was very young, us kids seldom had pop. On occasions, my mom would splurge a bit and buy Shasta (if you didn't drink Shasta as a kid, then you were missing out), but other than that, we really didn't drink pop. Mom though, being forever on one diet or another, would drink Fresca. In fact, when she was pregnant with my brother, she craved the stuff. That and parsnips. It certainly explains a lot about my brother. 

Later on in my childhood, we were allowed to drink some pop. Mom always kept Coke on hand as when I would get one of my horrid headaches, she would make me chew aspirin and then drink a Coke. The aspirin mixed with the caffeine often helped get the headaches under control. To this day, if my headache gets bad enough, I will be sending someone to the store for a Coke. Mom still liked her Fresca though,  and although I liked it too, I became a TAB girl. Probably mostly because it was cooler to drink TAB than Fresca according to magazine advertisements. 

By the mid-'70s Pepsi had come out with diet Pepsi and Mom gave up her beloved Fresca for this new kid on the block. By this time, we had all become diet pop drinkers which pretty much ruined regular pop for us,  because it was now too sweet. We were pretty much addicted to all the artificial sweeteners that were killing lab rats by the dozens and apparently, we didn't care. 

As the '80s rolled in, Coke, A&W, and Dr. Pepper all had their own diet versions. In the early to mid-'80s, I  found diet Orange Crush which mixed famously with cherry vodka and tasted like Hawaiian Punch. That was my very favorite until it wasn't...if you get my drift. After that, I  was pretty fond of diet Dr. Pepper. I think I pretty much lived on diet DP until the early '90s. But then, something life-changing happened. I found.....diet Mt. Dew!!!! It was like liquid meth to me. After one glass, I was full-on addicted and stayed that way until about five years ago.

When a friend got me interested in the Trim Healthy Mama eating program, this was really the first time I even thought about tossing diet Dew out of my life. Up until then, this lime green elixir had gotten me through many a tough time, and frankly, I couldn't imagine my life without it. Then I actually started reading about diet pop and pop in general. By this time, I was no longer calling it pop like every other loyal Kansan. I was now calling it soda after living with a Missourian all those years. Whatever it was called though, my research was telling me that the best word for it was.....unhealthy. 

The lovely ladies of THM went into details about the ingredients in both soda and diet soda and how bad they all were for you. Then there was article after article about diet soda being linked to muscle issues, cancer, and diabetes. Yes, diabetes. It seems that diet soda can actually trigger sugar cravings which are not good for diabetics or really anyone for that matter. The most interesting thing I read though, was how there had been some correlation between diet soda and.....wait for it.....migraines. Lawdy, what had I been putting in my body all these years....and more importantly....what had it done to my body?

You may have snickered a bit when I made the comment about diet Mt. Dew being like liquid meth, but to me, it really was an addiction, and going off of it took me about a year and I literally had to detox from it. Coming off of it the first time, I got sick, because I am pretty sure that rather than water, my body was about 70% diet, Mt. Dew. I got the shakes, was dizzy and I was a royal b!tch as I went through withdrawals. It was not a fun time had by anyone. 

Thanks to THM though, I found my way off of it when I found their drink...Good Girl Moonshine.  Yeah, I laughed too the first time I heard the name, but it really was what got me off all soda. When I realized that they had a version that tasted very much like diet Mt. Dew, I was sold. 

Good Girl Moonshine or GGMS is a homemade drink recipe from THM. In mine, I mix lime juice and lemon juice with some orange extract. I add liquid stevia to taste with a splash of vanilla and about a tsp of apple cider vinegar. To that, I add about 20 oz of  Soda Stream water (yes I have to have my fizzy fix) and ice. It comes very close to the taste of diet Mt. Dew and if anyone should know what diet Mt. Dew tastes like....it is me. 

Once I started full-on replacing diet Mt. Dew with GGMS, I found myself sleeping better, less headaches, and a whole lot fewer sugar cravings. The great thing about GGMS is, that you can play around with flavors and come up with whatever your tastebuds like. I have made ginger ale, strawberry flavored, cherry-flavored, and rootbeer flavored. They are 100 times healthier and there are no side effects. It is also a lot cheaper too. 

Oh....and who saw the "apple cider vinegar" and went...NOPE!? Trust me, I did too when I first started drinking it. It is an acquired taste, and to start with, less is best. ACV though, is very healthy and good for you, and believe it or not, I can't imagine my drink without it now. 

I know there are those out there reading this and thinking, I AM NOT GIVING UP MY DR. PEPPER! That is fine, but if on occasion you want to replace a soda with something a bit healthier, then I think GGMS might be the way to go. There are absolutely tons of recipes online and once you have tried a couple, you will find it really easy to play around with ingredients and find your own favorite drink. Plus it is really fun to walk around drinking out of one of those big mason jars with a straw, a lid, and a handle. Okay....maybe that's just me. 

Let's face it, we are only given one body and one life and it would be kind of tragic if we messed that up over a stupid soda addiction. Instead, let's be good to ourselves, treat our bodies with respect, and keep this one body in as good a shape as possible. I know I am trying...how about you? 

Until next time, stay healthy, stay hydrated, and don't forget.....water is good too! 

COVID, Planet Fitness and An Ear Infection

I decided that it was time to brush the dust off this particular blog and show it some love, and today's verbiage is perfect for the theme of this blog. 

I know most of us are beyond tired of hearing about or even thinking about COVID, and yet almost a year later, it is still a major part of our culture and our lives. It has caused illness, death, fear, and yes, in some cases, even strange and ridiculous behavior. It has also done a number on people's mental health as we have become a society that no longer can be face to face or have the human interactions we have always relied on to soothe us, guide us and help us to feel....human. 

We as a family have had COVID go through our house at least once that we are sure of, and we have been put on self-containment several times as we were closely exposed. The fact is, no matter whether you wear a mask or not, wash your hands until they are sandpaper, and/or avoid crowds like it's your job, you can still fall ill. I have always known this and because of knowing this, I have never panicked over it. I have always used common sense, but when it went through the house, it was what it was. Thankfully, we all had mild to moderate forms of it, and we all came out okay. 

I will say though, that aside from making us all physically sick, it has also changed us and our world. It has changed how we view everything from crowds to even socializing. It has caused mass fear, and with mass fear, there has also been mass irrationality. Mental health has been affected, and there has been a rise in abuse cases as well as addictions of all forms. People have hidden in their homes with nothing but delivered food, their TV's and their social media, and they have become slaves to negativity and fear. 

There are others though, like me, who weren't the most "social" people on the planet to begin with, so isolation and no contact hasn't been quite the challenge for us that has been for others. There have been changes though and yes, they have affected me. The biggest change has been helping my granddaughter with her schooling. It began last year after spring break. You remember....the never-ending spring break?! She was in first grade and teachers, students, parents, and grandparents were thrown into a tizzy over schools being shutdown. Somehow, we managed to get these kids through the end of school, never dreaming that in August, we would still be in pretty much the same boat. 

I will say, that this distance learning has been one of the more stressful things in my life. I am constantly aware that....NO! I am not smarter than a second-grader. And it is not so much what they do, but, HOW they are expected to do it. More than once there have been tears and you better bet, they weren't always hers. 

There have been a lot of positives though, that I think have come from the COVID chaos. One of those has been a sense of time slowing down a bit. For a while, many people were sidelined to work their jobs from home. People didn't feel so rushed as they didn't have to get dressed up and fight traffic to get to work. There became a more laid back feel to our lives. Sadly, there were others who lost their jobs or were laid off, so this gave them new found time with their families. Suddenly people were cooking, baking, sewing, playing games with their kids and life was feeling much like life had been in the old days (the 70's and 80's). 

I myself slowed down a bit and decided to use my daily time in the kitchen (this is where we did school work), to do some cooking, baking, and canning, while Miss W did her schooling. After years of failure, I learned to make some pretty decent cookies, and loaves of homemade bread were always available to family and friends. I even made some pretty great jelly, that lasted about five minutes in our house. 

I also noticed that how I felt about the world and what was going on in it, was also changing. I was realizing that the big things like politics and even COVID, I was very limited on what I could do or change. What I could do though, was change me and maybe here or there in some small way, change my little piece of the world. 

As we drew closer to election time, after a summer of countrywide upheaval and unrest, I grew more and more discouraged with social media and the people on all sides of the issues, as they seemed to all have become angry, hateful and so self-assured that they were right, that there was no longer anything even resembling respectful discourse. I began to shut up and just watch people implode upon themselves. Then I just gradually walked away. 

It was about this time, just after the election but before Thanksgiving, that I went to the doctor. It was my yearly visit and he looked at me with a bit of disdain. I was on two kinds of blood pressure medicine, and my BP was still 140/100. He was not pleased and truthfully, neither was I. He gave me a month to get it down, or we were going to have to have a "serious" talk. I walked out of the office numb, as I had a million reasons why it was likely so high, but I wasn't sure how or even if I was going to make any changes. With everything in the world, I was just so neutral in my emotions that I really felt kind of stuck. 

Something must have hit a chord with me though because, on that day, I made a conscious effort to "social distance" myself from social media and to make a very unplanned and unexpected stop on my way home. 

My older son Wes, for several years, had devoted at least 3-5 nights a week to working out. Sometimes he went to our local gym and sometimes he worked out in the garage, but it had become as much a part of his routine as breathing. I know the rest of us, who in his vision did nothing more than lie around the house and eat, frustrated him. He watched us get sick, struggle with our health, and live in a mess of stress. I watched him though too. His body had definitely changed over time and he was strong as an ox. He did on rare occasions catch some precarious bug flitting through the house, but while the rest of us might be down for a week, he was usually up and over it in a day or so. I knew what he was doing was working and I also knew that working out on a regular basis was keeping him sane. 

Just weeks before, about 5 minutes down the road, there was a new gym in town. It was a Planet Fitness that was now taking residence in an old Dillons building. I had driven by it tons of times as they gutted and prepped the building. They were running sign-up promotions long before the building opened and even though there were already a couple of city-run gyms within a 10-mile vicinity, people seemed to be flocking to the new kid in town. Wes was one of those and he is pretty particular about his gyms and what he expects from them. He seemed please though. 

So on that day, when the BP was high and I was blah, my car, as if having a mind of its own, drove right into the Planet Fitness parking lot and stopped. I had no idea what I was doing there, but I figured with all the hype I had seen, it wouldn't hurt to check it out. As I walked in the door, I was hit with Beyonce singing "Put a Ring on It," and purple! There was purple everywhere.....and it was pretty. 

A young adult behind the counter greeted me. I told him that I was just looking and he said, "Let me show you around." There were free weights, weight machines for every part of your body, bikes, ellipticals, treadmills, and stair climbers. There was also a 30-minute room where you could get a full-body workout in 30 minutes and other rooms with machines and pulleys and things that I had no idea what they were. They also had tanning beds, massage chairs, and hydro massage chairs and beds. I hate to say it, but this place had me at the pretty purple. 

As if my mouth had a mind of its own, I heard myself telling them to sign me up. I wanted "the black membership," which included all the bells and whistles.....especially that hydro massage chair. I had no idea what that was about, but I knew that someday in the near future, I was going to find out. 

When I drove off, and the shock of my impromptu membership hit me, I wondered if this was going to be like ALL the other gym memberships that I had joined and never used. Somehow, I didn't think so, but I wasn't going to get my hopes or anyone else's hopes up just yet. 

With Thanksgiving so close and everyone's schedules so crazy, I was only able to go to PF, a couple of times before turkey day. It was a test to see if my body would even allow me to exercise. I had visions of myself passing out in the first five minutes or worse, only going in to use the hydro massage chair and leaving. Because of this, I made a deal with myself. I could only try the chair after I had gone to the gym regularly for a month. 

I started out slow, doing only light cardio, to find out what my body was capable of. It began with 30 minutes on the treadmill. Then I began to change up speed and incline and worked my way up to 45 minutes and then an hour. When I knew my legs would not crumble or give out under me, I then added the elliptical. I started with 15 minutes and worked my way to 30 minutes, using the elliptical for 30 and the treadmill for 30. Again, I would change speeds and inclines and would try to get the biggest bang for my buck in the 30 minute time allotment. Before I knew it, it was the New Year and I had managed to get to the gym 3-5 times each week. It was time for the hydro massage chair reward. Let me just say, it is all that and a bag of chips. I only have time to use it on the weekends, but you can bet, every Saturday and Sunday, my workout ends with the chair. 

So here we are and it's almost the end of January. I am still making it work so that I get to the gym 3-5 times a week, and if I can't figure any other way, I will drag myself out of bed and get there by 4 a.m. to ensure that I am putting myself and my health first. It seems to be paying off, as I went to the doctor Friday and my BP is 110/68 and I have lost 11 pounds. The doctor said if I keep the gym up, that in a month or so, he will start weaning me off the BP meds. YAY!

Starting in February, I am going to start working with a personal trainer (all part of that black membership) and start working on my strength and muscle tone. This body has to stay strong in order to lift David's body around. 

It has been an amazing experience that I am really surprised at myself over. I honestly think that the two things that won me over were, Wes's dedication and the purple....oh, and the chair. I have now been going long enough that my body seems to crave the workout. Today though, my body will just have to be happy with rest as my bed is about as far as I am going. 

I think I have an ear infection. I can't hear, I feel water slushing in my ear and I get dizzy every time I stand up. I got up to get ready for church this morning and it took me about 2 seconds to realize that driving or even walking, weren't going to work for me today. I am trying very hard to get better about listening to my body and taking care of me. So this is me taking care of me. I can't just lay here and do nothing though, so I blog. I know the ears will be fine very soon and then I will be back to church, the gym, and my life. 

Here's hoping that you all are doing well, finding your way in this new year, and taking care of you! Until next time....be safe, be happy, be kind, and I hope you find your own pretty purple thing. 

The Next Seven Days

Diets. They are the downfall of my self esteem and all that is good and holy in my life. If you have read this blog before, you will know that in my lifetime, I have tried many different diets/lifestyle changes/implements of torture. All of them work for awhile, but they are all only as good as the user and this user has issues.

The last "diet" I was on, was Trim Healthy Mama (THM). Now don't get me wrong, it is really a good lifestyle and I lost weight on it, but it definitely is not without it's problems. THM is very close to the KETO diet and it has a lot of sound healthy things going on within it. It is really good for people with gluten issues and those who are diabetic. It is a great way to get sugar out of your diet and to get your metabolism going. What it isn't for me is, doable for life. 

Forget that THM has you in the kitchen most of your day because everything is basically made from scratch and they insist that you eat every three hours, but after a year or so, I simply couldn't stomach the food anymore. Perhaps it was the six meals a day....everyday for 365 days or maybe it was just using the same combinations of food and the same seasonings in different ways. I don't know, but after a while, I just simply could not eat the main course meals anymore. I have talked to others who were also THM converts and they too had similar complaints, so it wasn't just me and my inner rebellion against diets.

It has been six years since I first started it, and although I have gone back and restarted several times, after the last time, my body just refused to try again. I literally started getting sick at the smell and the taste. That is not to say though, that I didn't learn a lot from the program and that it didn't leave some positives in my life.

First of all, I totally gave up diet Mt. Dew. That was an expensive blessing that I wasn't sad to see go. I also learned a bit about my metabolism. I found my new favorite drink that is actually healthy. I really did learn a new appreciation and love for cooking and I learned about some Vitamin C based drinks that truly help to ward off illness during the cold and flu season. There are a lot of other positives that came from the experience, but just like with any healthy eating venture, if you quit doing it, it quits working.

This year for me, like for many of us, has been a challenge so far. Between the mental and the physical along with the constant upheavals locally and all around, it has been really hard for me to find balance. I am a huge feelings eater and lawdy have I had feelings! I have also gone through trying prescribed diet pills (yes, I was that up in my feelings) as well as having all of my upper teeth pulled and getting dentures that are still a work in progress. It has been months of ups and downs both in life and my weight. Add in some emotionally heavy and very dramatic situations that have hit very close to home and my heart and I am what the text books would call....a freaking mess.

So in the last couple of weeks, I have done a bit of thinking about where I am at and where I actually want to be. The two seem miles a part at this point. Would I like my thighs not to rub together when it's 90 degrees out? You betcha, but more than that, I would like to be healthy both physically and mentally and if my years have taught me nothing, it is that the two go hand in hand. You really need a balance of both to be truly healthy. That is when I decided to get real with myself and form a plan. As many diets as I have been on, I know that "a diet" or anything even remotely referencing "a diet" is not going to work for me. I also know that diet pills prescribed or otherwise, aren't the answer either. I felt like total crap the whole time I was on them. So if neither of those are the answer...then what is? Truthfully, I don't know, but I do know that I have enough knowledge on the subject thanks to THM, that I can sort of point myself in the right direction.

I actually do have a new found love of cooking and not just cooking, but the whole cooking from scratch thing. I learned from THM, the value and importance of knowing exactly what goes into your food. The extra additives in boxed or prepared foods are not only unhealthy but can also be part of why it is hard to lose weight. I have also gotten more adventurous in the last few months and started trying new foods and recipes. I'm actually not a horrible cook. Who knew? With all of this cooking though, there has also been a fair amount of eating going on too. So how do I cook the foods I want to and eat the foods I cook and not outgrow everything in my closet? After doing quite a bit of reading...and a few tips from THM....the key seems to be portion control and trying not to eat a lot of carbs and fats together. The concept for me is a work in progress but it does make me more conscious about what I cook and how I put foods together.

Of course as we all know, losing weight or more importantly....being healthy, is not just about what we put into our bodies. It is also about how we treat our bodies. Inactivity is unhealthy in any body regardless of size. Our bodies need movement to keep muscles and joints supple and working, They need exercise to properly oxygenate our organs and keep them functioning to the best of their ability. A sedentary body is a body ripe for injury, illness and mental health issues. It's true. The more active you are, the better off you are both mentally and physically. The only problem here is that I am not a huge fan of exercise. I really had to weigh (no pun intended) my huge love of eating over my huge dislike of exercise. The result? Balance. I can actually have my cake and eat it too, if I am willing to throw a workout or two in the mix to balance it out. Oh the sacrifices we make for love....of food.

When I began talking with myself about exercise, a million reasons why exercise did not fit into my life, started to bloom in my garden of excuses. Honestly, my life is pretty non-stop busy from the time my feet hit the floor until I go to bed, especially with David, the grand kids, the house, the laundry, the cooking and the yard. I stay pretty active all day, but there is active and then there is healthy exercise active. Since there are only so many hours in the day, I decided that the best way for me to get exercise in, is to combine it with my already busy household routines. To start with, on the days when I mow and workout in the yard, there is already some healthy activity going on there and if we are counting steps, by the time the yard is finished, I have put in a good 8000 steps on the yard alone. Add to that the bending down over and over to pick up the yard before mowing and the bending and stretching with various other yard activities and that is a pretty fair workout for the day. One day though, is not enough. So I had to get creative.

I can't really afford the luxury of a gym membership and in the best of times, I am pretty much a homebody. Since COVID-19 though, I am darn near a recluse and I kind of like it that way. I am willing to venture out several times a week and go for a 30 or so minute walk and when I have to go to the grocery store, I do consider that part of my walk regimen, but still I needed more....so I have decided to try and make my house....my gym. My house has two sets of 13 step stairs. One is to go up to the second story and one is to go to the basement and I climb up and down those steps at least 10 times/day. I have decided to double that and each time I have to go up and down with a purpose, I will add and additional up and down as part of a workout. I have also decided that since I manage to go in and out of every room in my house at least 3 times each day, that I am going to assign 15 reps of a given exercise in each room. For instance, in my room I have a big exercise stability ball. Each time I enter my room, I do 15 crunches on the ball. If I go in the upstairs bathroom, I do 15 jumping jacks. The living room is 15 push ups and in the laundry room I have dumb bells and I do 15 reps of different arm lifts every time I enter the room. Each room either has some kind of workout equipment such as bands or the stability ball or in the rooms that don't, I just do some sort of exercise that doesn't require equipment.

I tested this technique out a bit last week and really liked it and felt like I accomplished something without having to make a lot of extra time to workout. Starting tomorrow I will try to be absolutely dedicated to it for the the next seven days. I am also going to be dedicated to eating what I want, but paying attention to the portions, and as a side note, I am also going to make it a rule to not eat after 6 p.m. It is proven that this helps with weight loss and also makes it so that you don't have acid reflux all night. That is win/win in my book.

If you notice I said that I am dedicated to all of this for the next seven days. I figure that I can do anything for a week. At that time I can see how I feel, what the scales show and if I think this particular plan works for me. If it's not working, then I can change it up and figure out if I need to scale back more on the portions or add to the workouts. At any rate....it is a start and without a starting point, you can't take the next best step in the direction you need to be going.

The world doesn't appear that it is going to be settling down at all any time soon and with all that is going on, it would be very easy to succumb to the negativity both mentally and physically. The bottom line though is that the world is not responsible for taking care of me. That is my journey, my obligation and my choice as to whether I want to be the best me I can be or if I want to be a reflection of how unhealthy the world currently is. Only I can change me....so let's see what happens.  

Taking the Ick Factor Out of the Five Year Test

Fear. I know the feeling well. The fear of illness is currently one of the top five fears in the world. It is not so much the fear of catching something and recovering, it is the fear of catching something and ultimately succumbing to it. The fear of something catching us off guard and changing both our long term and short term plans for our lives can literally be debilitating.

Funny, but during this whole COVID-19 thing, I have never felt fear. Maybe it is because I have done my research and know what to look for and have a plan of action for both myself and my family should it become a reality in my home. I am also aware, that while statistically my special needs son would be at the greatest risk if COVID made its way into my house, I am likewise aware that as a whole, my family is not at great risk for dying from it. Truthfully, at least in my world, there are many illnesses out there that are far scarier and far more life threatening to myself and my family. We have a family blood line full of Lupus and other various and no less treacherous auto immune diseases as well as an active cancer gene(s) that has made its way through, randomly effecting some while  bypassing others.

Today though, I am here to talk about cancer and one cancer in particular.....colon cancer. Now cancer in and of itself, is an indiscriminate bully. It does not care what color you are, what ethnicity you are, how rich you are or how well you think you take care of yourself. And while it does tend to have a slightly higher tenancy in men than women, it is not gender exclusive.

Getting older, while a gift......as not everyone is afforded the privilege, it is not without its speed bumps and even a few giant hurdles. As our body ages, so do our cells, vessels, bones and organs and our bodies become far more susceptible to injury and disease. To stay on top of this susceptibility, starting at about 40, we have to start putting our bodies through testing that at times "feel" nearly as awful as the disease we are trying to stay on top of.

At 50, if we have had no major health issues prior and we aren't aware of any major family history of colon cancer, then most people are advised by their doctors to have a colonoscopy every five years. As preventative tests go, it is one of the more unpleasant ones, but also one of the most life saving tests you can have. But I'll talk more about that in a moment. For now, I will tell you what brought me to write this particular blog piece.

Last week, in the throws of all the COVID-19 lock down stuff, I had a scare. And under the mantle of too much information, I will tell you that the scare was blood in my stool. I dare to be so open about this because often people don't know what they need to be looking for so they ignore signs and symptoms. Because of my family history, I knew that this was something I needed to discuss with my doctor. It was funny too, because my last colonoscopy was in 2015 and I knew it was time for another one, but my plan was to wait until the lock down was over. Apparently God and my doctor felt differently.

After several days of having bright red blood and no knowledge of hemorrhoids or any other such issue, I decided that I better call my colorectal specialist (if you have heavy cancer in your family....you have one of those). His receptionist said that with the lock down, he was only doing emergency surgeries until June, but she wanted to check with him before scheduling me. Within a few minutes his nurse called me back and I was on the schedule for April 15th. There was something ironic about it being tax day....don't you agree?

Now here is where I tell you, if you haven't already experienced it, that when you have an issue that makes you concerned about having cancer and you are waiting on testing or results, it can take a toll on you mentally and emotionally. Most of us have known or loved someone with cancer and that is not a road any of us wishes to go down if we can keep from it.

Since this was not my first cancer scare, and with everything else going on in the world right now, I diligently and deliberately focused my attention on all that I could control in my life and left what I couldn't control to God. The week went by fairly quickly but as the day drew closer, fear did creep in here and there....after all I am human. Now THIS is where I am going to interject and say that many cancers, and especially colon cancer, are not caught early because of fear. 

No one wants to get a cancer diagnosis, but a stage one or two cancer diagnosis, where the cancer is caught early and is far more treatable is much preferable, than a stage three or four diagnosis where doctors are working against time and a disease that is continually progressing and the odds are much less in your favor. However, even with this rational reasoning, fear is irrational and sometimes it is the irrationality of the fear that keeps people from getting tested and staying on top of their health. They live by a "what I don't know won't hurt me," mentality when just the opposite can be very true. Fear is a powerful immobilizer and in this case.....fear can kill you. 

Another reason that many put off or refuse testing for colon cancer is because of the test itself. Let's face it, it is not a test we really want to think about or talk about and if you have never had one, but only heard horror stories, then stepping up to the plate that first time can be almost as scary as the cancer itself. So let's do some real talk here.

First of all let me say that I totally get the ick factor in all of this. The truth is, we ALL have rectums and colons and many people out there have issues relating to both. We all poop! We also all have issues one way or another with pooping at some point in our lives and if we take care of ourselves like we are supposed to, by the time we turn 51, ALL of us should know what a colonoscopy is all about. Sadly, though, that is not the case, so maybe by writing this, I can take some of the grossness out of this, some of the fear and some of the stigma out of talking about colorectal disease.

Just an FYI, colonoscopies not only detect cancer, but they also detect a myriad of other diseases that can mess with your stomach, your bowels and your over all health. For some, colonoscopies start when the individual is much younger than 50, in the hopes of detecting irritable bowel syndrome, gluten disease and diverticulitis to name a few. Colonoscopies are also started earlier than 50 when there is an alarming rate of colon cancer in your close family tree or if you have done genetic testing and you have been found to have the colon cancer gene (there will likely be more on that in another blog piece at another time.) Normally though, in a normally healthy individual, colonoscopies begin at 50 and are done every 5 years after that until the age of 80 and from there, as prescribed by the doctor.

So you have heard the horror stories about the dreaded colonoscopy, but what are the facts? The facts are that the worst part of the scope is not the procedure at all, but the prep for the procedure. In order to have a colonoscopy, as you can well imagine, your colon must be clean and clear. This means that what is in there, must come out. About noon the day prior to your procedure, you start on clear liquids, no food and absolutely nothing RED to drink. Then about 6 p.m. and then again at 9 p.m.,  you get some truly nasty crap to drink. Mine came in two bottles. You mixed the bottles with 16 oz of water and had to drink it at the respective times. You are basically drinking the most awful tasting laxative of your life. The reaction time from drinking to making yourself comfortable on the toilet is about 30 minutes and depending on what resides in your colon, this can last from several hours to the entire night. Now while unpleasant (diarrhea is never fun), this part isn't too bad. A few magazines, a good book or a well charged cell phone and you just wait it out. The absolute worst part though is the ingesting of that laxative. For me, the first bottle went down okay, but the second was a bit dicier as I was worried that there would be puking involved too. What I figured out on the second one was that since you can't just shoot 16 oz like a shot, you can spread out the large gulps over about half an hour and if you drink water in between each gulp, it makes it much easier. Once the laxative is down, the worst is over. 

By the time you head to your procedure appointment, your colon is clean and other than feeling a bit dehydrated, you really don't feel too bad. They usually have you arrive an hour before your procedure and make sure you have someone to drive you home as you are under anesthesia for the procedure. Once there, they bring you back and have you strip completely naked and put on a gown. They then take you to pre-op where they administer an IV and also some fluids to replace what you have lost. Now for those of you who panic at needles, there is no real easy way around this, but I will say that most of the nurses who start IV's for surgeries are very good at what they do and the stick is far less painful than you might imagine.

Once the IV is in and the fluids are going, you simply lay there and wait your turn. When they wheel you back, they turn you on your side and the anesthetist says.............  I have no idea what they say because I am usually out by then. In what feels like seconds you are waking up back in post op and the doctor has already filled your driver in on the health of your colon. From that point you wake up, get dressed and go home. They recommend you eat and drink light for the rest of the day and by the next day, it's like nothing ever happened. And THAT my friends is a colonoscopy. 

During the procedure, they will be looking for polyps or lesions that could be cancerous. They will usually remove any polyps they find during the procedure and biopsy any lesions they find. All are sent for pathology and in cases such as this, you may have a delay in your diagnosis. In most cases though, the procedure lasts about 30 minutes and you have results before you walk out. Blessedly, my case turned out to be diverticulitis (an inflammation of the bowel) which had caused the bleeding. It is a light case and easily treatable. Had it been something more though, since in most cases colon cancer is slow growing and since I am fastidious about getting my testing done, I would likely have caught it early and it would have been very treatable.

So yeah, getting older in some cases sucks, but knowledge is power and taking control of your own health and being pro-active can be the difference literally between life and death. I truly hope that for those of you who have never had the test and didn't feel comfortable talking about it with others, that this has helped you. For those that are putting it off, STOP! It is a few hours of discomfort for five years of peace of mind.

If you want more information about colorectal cancers, the disease, the statistics and the facts, please check out the American Cancer Society on Colorectal Cancer. I hope you will take this to heart and take care of you and share this to help take care of others because......CANCER SUCKS!

Two Weeks In

So you have decided to change your life. You want to eat better, sleep better and just all the way around be healthier. Yeah....me too! Right now though, I am not just in the "I want stage" but I am in the actively proceeding forward, "I am doing it" stage.

A little over two weeks ago, I decided that I was going to give Trim Healthy Mama another go and I was going to see what I could achieve to better my health, my joy and my life. I knew THM would work....if I worked it. After all THM didn't quit on me.....I quit on it and more importantly, I had quit on myself. So here we are.

This time around, since I am not as much of a novice where THM is concerned, instead of focusing on how actually to work the program, I am focusing on how I feel and how to best tweak the program to work for me personally. Yes, that is the beauty of THM, there is leeway there to let you make the program work for you. Of course, you have to be mindful of your body and your health and pay attention to how eating, drinking and moving differently affects you personally. Then it is as simple as keeping what works for you and putting what currently doesn't on the back burner. I say put it on the back burner, because what I have learned about THM is, that just because something doesn't work for you in the here and now, doesn't mean that later on it won't be just what you need.

As I stated above, this time around, I am much more familiar with the program and how it works, so I am able to be a little more experimental. One thing that I notice, that I think I touched on in another blog post was that, as you become more entrenched in the program, your taste buds change. At least mine did. I remember when I first started out, things like apple cider vinegar in my drinks, mashed cauliflower, and the different breads made without white or wheat flour tasted off and admittedly, not appetizing at all. The fact that sugar was a no no, forced me to take out stock in Truvia as it was the only sweetener I could stand and I had to have a ton of it in everything. Things like Gentle Sweet and Super Sweet were not in the least appealing to me. Now though, here I stand today to tell you that I live on Good Girl Moonshine with yes....apple cider vinegar, I eat cauliflower in all forms and put it into just about everything and although I am still not a fan of some of the breads, I can eat them and I have grown a real affinity for sprouted bread. As for my sugar addiction....once again it is under control and I have grown a true appreciation for Gentle Sweet and Super Sweet as I have learned to use them in my cooking. I also no longer feel the need to add as much Stevia either and have lowered my intake dramatically.

This time around, I am also taking advantage of my THM cookbooks and trying different recipes such as Reuben in a Bowl as well as going back to some of my families favorites like Egg Roll in a Bowl. I am also learning  as I have stated before, that by doing a little planning ahead, making a weekly menu and a reciprocating grocery list, that I am cutting way down on our food bill as well as waste. Also, most of these recipes make enough that there is plenty left over for lunches or to freeze for future meals. It cuts down on the impulses to go grab fast food because you are tired and by using your crock pot and/or Instantpot, you save a great deal of time in the kitchen.

So since starting back on THM on January 13th, as of today I have lost 4.8 pounds. Of course the first week is when I lost a big part of that, as not only was I eating better, but I also started drinking more water, which always flushes the system and sets your body up for success. Also, without getting too graphic or throwing out TMI, when we don't eat and drink well, our bodies don't process well. Our systems don't function efficiently from sleep to flushing waste from our bodies. Too much sugar, fat and carbs together and not enough vegetables and healthy fats can cause our systems and our metabolism to slow down to nothing. We can feel like slugs moving through our day. Once back on THM though, I could feel everything starting to work properly again and I was functioning better, enjoying my food more, sleeping better and just all around feeling better. So while the weight loss is nice, the NSV's that are associated with all of this are sometimes even better.

NSV's you ask? NSV's are non-scale victories. While the numbers on the scale might be my goal, the NSV's are what will actually keep me motivated between weigh-in's and help me to stay focused on what is important in all of this.....me and my health. From time to time you may notice me putting far more emphasis on the NSV's in my life than on the numbers and that is the way I feel it should be. In fact, in my opinion, the NSV's have far more value to me than the numbers ever will.

In the little more than two weeks I have been doing this, my blood pressure numbers are also getting better, but I am still not where I want them to be and I refuse to rely solely on medication to get me there. After all....my end game is to be off blood pressure medication altogether (another important NSV for me). As I have been focused on getting back into the swing of eating these last weeks, starting this week, I plan on adding some movement and dare I say exercise into the mix. I had already started doing some very light yoga in the morning and in the evening and it does help how I function throughout the day and sleep at night, but this week there will be walking. We shall see how that goes in the days to come.

The one thing that I have learned through my past on THM and through my life in the last year is that......any goal is achievable if I want it badly enough and am willing to work for it. I have also learned the valuable lesson that I can do nothing without help from my Higher Power, meaning that when I am weak of will, He will pull me through....all I have to do is ask. I am also fully aware that in order to change things, I must be willing to put in the work and love myself enough to want the best for me. I can't do anything for someone else. I MUST do it for me. And finally, I can't eat an elephant in one bite, but I can eat him one bite at a time. In other words, I will not lose 100 lbs, be healthy and feel great in a week. However, if I take it one step at a time, one meal at a time and one NSV at a time, I will not only reach my goals, but quite possibly exceed them.

So there you have it. I am two weeks in and still going strong. Yay me and yay THM!

Until next time.........

Let The Challenge Begin

So today begins a new challenge. A Trim Healthy Mama challenge that is. I am truly excited and ready to go. The first time I lost a substantial amount of weight and realized that this 50 something mom and grandma could actually lose weight, was through a THM challenge. Of course when life got tough, I quit putting the work in and I quit feeling that I deserved the benefits of a healthy life and before I knew it, I was once again hitting the bottle (the diet mt. dew bottle that is), carbs and fats were freely mixing and I was stress eating over everything from what was happening on the Young and the Restless, to what was going on in real life.

Now, here I am again with the keys to the kingdom of health and this time....I hope to prove to myself once again, that I can do this and that I am worth it. This time, I have a little more understanding about myself and I am a lot more motivated than I have been in the past. My health has become a huge motivator ever since my blood pressure started to rise and I had to be put on medication for it. I promised myself that it was going to be a short term fix, as I vowed to myself to lose the weight so I could lose the medication.

I also have been dealing for years with GERD or acid reflux disease. Again, I am on medication for this ailment and if I don't take it religiously, I suffer horribly. Even sometimes taking it faithfully doesn't help if I eat too late or eat the wrong foods. I will find myself awakened from a sound sleep about 2 a.m., gagging and choking with my throat and esophagus feeling as if they are literally on fire. My doctor told me that if I lose the weight I could  cut these issues down to almost nothing. I am also anxious to cut down on the medication for this disease too, as it is being proclaimed to cause dementia. Not something I want to have to deal with down the road.

So this particular challenge will run from today through January 31st. It is a short challenge in that it is only 19 days long, but there is a certain beauty in that. Most anyone can do anything for 19 days and it is a great way to dip my toes back into the full on THM program and remind myself just how good I feel on this plan.

This challenge is run by Chrissy Benoit through The (THM) Challenge Group page. In this particular challenge, we have to eat 100% on plan with few or no crossovers. We must exercise at least 15 minutes/day at least four days per week and we must eat at the table without the distraction of computer, phone or tv. OH....and there is one more thing which I think is so cool and I have never done before. We have to make a vision board. 

I have always loved the idea of a vision board, but I have just never done one. So....I decided if I was going to be all in on this challenge....that I was going to be....all in. I made my vision board yesterday It is the picture that is at the top of this blog post. I had no idea how to make a vision board, so I decided to go to my favorite internet spot (YouTube) and I found a video that showed me exactly how to do it. Not only did I make it, but I also went to Walgreens and printed it off and found a frame for it. It will be the first thing I see each day and hopefully the motivation I need to help me see my way through this challenge.

Going into this, I have no big numbers in mind and no outlandish goals. I have the guidelines set for the challenge and my only hope is to take it one day at a time and stick as closely to the rules as possible. Then we will see where I am and how I feel on the 31st.

If you too want to get back on the wagon and start not only looking better but feeling better, head on over to The Challenge Group and get on board. It's not too late and just think, 19 days from now you are going to be so glad you did.

Until next time........

This Fat Girl Can't Do Yoga

This fat girl can't do yoga! Now before everyone gets upset and starts saying that I am "fat" shaming myself, let me stop you right there. First of all I am not. I am stating facts. I am the f-word. If you want to be technical, according to my weight app, I am "Obese class II". Fat in my book sounds so much better. Fat can be worked on and changed. Obese is a medical term that sounds like a disease that I might never recover from. In my head, fat I can do something about, obese....maybe not. So no shaming here at all. I am not ashamed, simply determined.

I have had great success with Trim Healthy Mama in the past, but it is not a miracle cure that once I lose the weight it stays gone. Just like anything in this life, it takes work and effort. Even though I felt great and my doctor was over the moon at all of my numbers and my overall health when I was working the plan, when I gave up on me and started eating unhealthy, chemically enhanced junk again and quit making myself a priority, the weight and the health issues came back with a vengeance. So what's a girl to do? I can either be Obese class II girl (or worse) or I can do what I know will work and what will get me healthy again. I can make myself and my health a priority.

Back in November, I started having blood pressure problems. Granted, some of it was due to stress but a lot of it was due to the way I was eating and the fact that although my life was busy, exercise was not a part of my routine. I ended up on blood pressure medication, but in my head I told myself that this was not going to be my life. My doctor even told me if I lost the weight, the blood pressure would come down and when that happened, he would gladly take me off the medication. Cool. Along with the blood pressure issue though, other parts of my body were starting to suffer from age, inactivity and the wrong kind of activity. I was starting to have real trouble with my back, shoulders and neck. I knew this trouble was coming from the constant lifting of my 18 year old special needs son. He is now nearly as tall as I am and weighs about 90 lbs. The fact that I don't do any real exercise, but then I lift him and his wheelchair multiple times a day puts me in the high risk category for destroying my muscles and joints, not to mention breaking bones. Any or all of this could put me out of commission for some time to come and make me useless as my sons caregiver. Yes, it is time to do something.

My doctor has suggested strength training for me. Being the stubborn person I am though, I am just not ready to step into a gym yet. I also am a control freak and feel like I can do it ALL myself so I am not ready to give up the possibility of home workouts until I have tried them and given them a fair shot. Thus came the idea of yoga. I have heard so many people with chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia or people who simply can't do regular exercise sing the praises of yoga and I knew from everything I read that it would likely help my back and muscles that were desperately in need of stretching and moving in more ways than just dead lifting 90 pounds over and over again. I also figured that yoga would be a nice "gentle" way to start working back into exercise and movement and I even had a plan.

I spent several days on YouTube watching yoga videos and trying to find something that I thought would be easy and effective. I actually found a whole series that I thought would be great. So I got my yoga mat and one day I declared "The day"  and I began. The first video I started with was a 15 minute morning video. It basically stretches you, wakes you up and gets your day started. I LOVED it. It was perfect and it really and truly has helped me with my tight shoulder muscles and my over all feeling of well being. With that being such a success, there was also a nighttime video to do just before bed. WOW! This one was also about 15 minutes long and it was phenomenal for helping me to shut down the day and relax. I am actually sleeping better. Yay! I am now two for two. I had to know that this winning streak was about to end.....and how right I was.

Since the morning and night yoga videos were so amazing, this same lady has 30 days worth of videos called "30 Days of Yoga". If you read up on them, this is supposed to be for anyone (beginner and beyond) and each day teaches you a new set of poses until after 30 days, the thought is that you/me/I should be fairly proficient at yoga. Well, this woman had not let me down so far, so let the Downward Dog begin. Now let me just say, Day #1 was 26 minutes long and I nearly died. No....seriously.....I nearly died. One of the poses she thought my Obese class II (aka fat) body should fold into cut off my air supply and I almost passed out. The only thing that saved me was the thought of my family coming home to find me dead in this less than attractive pose. Getting out of this pose with my body intact was no small feat...but I finally managed it. Then I had to plank. Planking looks far easier when someone who is long and thin does it than when someone is 5'1" and fat does it. I planked for 1/2 a seconded and then hit the mat sweaty and vowing to never eat sugar again. The sad thing was, I was only 4 minutes into the video. I spent the next 22 minutes calling this skinny yoga girl names and feeling sorry for myself because I was fat, sweaty and unable to bend without passing out or hold my own weight up with my toes. How had I come to this? 

Now don't get me wrong, I am NOT bashing yoga. Well, I actually was that day, but in general I am not. I have seen amazing things in myself with the truly beginner stuff in the morning and nighttime videos and I know that in time I will be able to get through more than 5 minutes of these videos and in fact master them, but not yet....and I am okay with that. It is simply a consequence of what I "chose" to do to myself with years of not taking care of myself.

I continue to do my two daily videos and I have gotten back on THM. The eating right alone makes me feel 100% better, but with the life I lead, I also need the exercise and some form of muscle toning/strength training. That being said, like everything else in life, I have to take it one step at a time. Starting on January 13th, Chrissy Benoit who runs the THM Challenge Group page, is starting a new challenge for the new year. I am all over this. I do fairly well with challenges and I hope to succeed yet again with this one. I am also joining my local gym during these winter months so that I can start a regular walking routine that isn't weather constricted (see....I am also working on my control issues too). I have weights at home and bosu ball that I plan to use to start working on my core and  muscle tone and yes I will continue to keep up with my morning and evening yoga and hopefully gradually start my 30 day yoga "challenge" again. I figure at the rate I am going, I should make it through those 30 days in about a year.

The lesson here is that we have to be realistic about who we are and where we are with our health. Saying I am "fat" doesn't mean I am ashamed or devastated by it. What it does mean is that I have an issue that could turn into a "real" life long problem for me if not taken care of and only I can love me enough to fix it. By staying realistic, I am not nearly so apt to deny my situation or let my health fall through the cracks. Reality can be really ugly if we refuse to acknowledge it, but the moment we choose to acknowledge it, is the moment we can take control and choose how to proceed. That's what I am doing.

So the reality is....this fat girl can't do yoga...today. In the tomorrows to come though, I plan to make yoga my b*tch!

Until next time........

2018

And we're back! Happy New Year everyone. I hope this finds you all healthy, happy and feeling no adverse effects from last night.

It has been awhile. Why? Because I have been on the journey of a lifetime and I never left my living room. I must say that 2018 was the most difficult, miraculous, painful and educational year I have ever lived through. It brought me huge sadness, joy and wisdom just to cover the basics. I learned about my world, the people in it and most of all....myself. Funny thing though, at the end of the day when the dust had cleared from it all, my journey brought me right smack dab back in the middle of.....Trim Healthy Mama. Hmmmm....you say. Curious?

Tell you all what. Go grab yourself a nice steaming cup of Bullet Proof Coffee (mine is butter toffee), wrap your blanket close around you and sit back and you and I will share the next few minutes as I tell you about my 2018 and my journey back to THM and myself. Go ahead. I'll wait!

Now that we are all comfy...... My 2018 was a roller coaster ride. There was sickness, total despair when I thought I might lose my home and great joy when my community, friends, neighbors and complete strangers rallied around my son and I and helped us to save it. I had no more than caught my breath from that when my youngest son who is special needs had to have a major spinal surgery which was touted to be his worst one so far. How can it get worse when he almost died from one of the others? This surgery however was necessary and ultimately life saving as well as quality of life saving. Blessedly, the surgery was in no way as bad as predicted and his recovery was one of the many miracles that happened in my life during the year.

In May I was given a bit of a roller coaster reprieve until July. Yep, July was when my world went into overdrive and I wasn't sure I was going to make it to see 2019. On July 2nd, (which little fun fact.... is not a great day for me to begin with as it is the anniversary of my husbands death), my older son came to me and told me that he was a meth addict. Yes, he was a full fledged, shooting up 5-7 times a day, addict. It was the beginning of a nightmare few weeks where I started to recognize things I had denied and started seeing who he, myself and a few others really were.

Those first weeks nearly killed me, literally, as I lived off diet soda, stress and no sleep. I rallied to help my addicted son, sure that I could cure him, fix him and save him. I was in 24/7 Superwoman mode constantly on the phone trying to find a place to take him, a place for him to stay and counseling. As quick as I had something in place and had him set up, he would walk back out. He preferred the streets and meth over rehab, counseling and sober living. I was devastated and still in "savior/victim" mode.....until I wasn't. Suddenly one day when all that was left of me was fumes and I nearly passed out in church, I realized that I was powerless over my sons choices, meth and addiction in general. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew what I was currently doing wasn't working and the path I was on was taking me on the fast track to ruining my health and possibly even killing me. I had a special needs son to think about and at this point in time, I needed to focus on him. That day I dropped my addicted son off at a gas station of his choosing, I drove home and went to bed. I think I slept for 14 hours straight. When I woke up though, my thinking was clearer and I went to my first Al-Anon meeting. I have never looked back.

Since that day, I have learned so much about myself and my own part in his addiction and I have learned about him. I have also learned a lot about life, my faith and who I am now vs who I was last July. My son is still an addict but in December, he decided to make some changes to his life and to begin recovery. As his mother I am happy but also leaving any expectations of the future out of it. I just pray each day he finds the strength and faith to keep taking it one day at a time on his road to recovery and I welcome any prayers you might give him, too.

So you can imagine, that it felt like I crammed several years worth of drama and an entire tele novella into one small year. When I started Al-Anon though, I was very surprised that much of what I was learning there was familiar to me. Then one day it hit me. Much of what THM teaches us walks hand in hand with Al-Anon. In both, you learn to put the focus on you while remembering that nothing we do is alone. God is always there. As someone who has always had faith, not until recently did I realize that there is a huge difference between claiming faith and actually walking the walk and talking the talk. Both Al-Anon and THM also teach us to forgive ourselves for our human weaknesses. The moment that was brought up in Al-Anon, I was immediately reminded of my first days reading about THM where they tell us that if we eat outside of plan, not to panic or condemn ourselves but to forgive our humanness and jump right back on plan in 3 hours. Finally THM also teaches us that although there is a plan set out before us, different things work for different people in the weight loss journey. Some people can eat crossovers and lose, some more S meals and some more E meals. It is up to each of us as individuals to find out what works for us on our weight loss journey. This same theme is shared throughout Al-Anon. The same thing doesn't necessarily work for everyone and it is up to each of us to find what does.

I also learned that my son is not the only addict in our family. I too am an addict and food is my drug of choice. As I learned about addiction and why people choose to continue a life of addiction even knowing the danger they cause to their health and their very lives, I realized that my drug of choice though legal, could have just as deadly of results in the end. Truthfully, I eat as a coping mechanism. I eat when I am depressed. I eat when I am stressed. I eat to hide from the world because in my "sick" way of thinking.....food is my only friend, enjoyment and escape.....and yet it is slowly destroying my health, my quality of life and if not addressed and dealt with, could eventually take away my life. Yep....it sounds like addiction to me.

I am learning to deal with facing things....even the hard stuff....instead of letting it fester and become a reason to binge. I am learning to focus on what I can handle and handling it and then turning the rest over to God. I am mostly though, realizing that my focus needs to remain on me and to understand that I am a good person who deserves a good life. Sometimes keeping the focus is difficult, but when it is, I simply focus on the moment and getting through that. Anyone can get through 60 seconds. 

So with all that I am learning, I have discovered that even through all of the negative of 2018, it brought me far more positive. In this last year I have found a new sense of who I am. I have learned that I am not in control of anyone or anything but myself! I also learned that maybe it was not others that needed to change as much as it was my own outlook that needed a change. That I can fix.

I see the world through much different eyes now and I see me much differently too. For the first time in maybe forever, I understand that I am worth the effort of a walk, a yoga workout and the wisdom of THM. I am worth the time in the kitchen and the time spent learning new recipes and loving myself.

So with this new year on us, you would think that with all my new found awareness that I have oodles and gobs of resolutions to start the year. You would be wrong. Resolutions are expectations and expectations whether it be weight loss, working out or even expectations of others, seldom work out. When they fall through, then we feel as if its a failure. There is no room for failure in my life. Instead, this year I am making decisions and my decisions go no further than the moment. Remember...we can do anything for 60 seconds and with each moment, I will give myself the love, acceptance and focus that I deserve.

Yes, it has been a year. A good year. Maybe even a great year and I am grateful for every moment because through it all, I found self-acceptance, grace and most of all....I found me!!! 

I wish each and every one of you an amazing new year and I hope that 2019 is filled with 525,600 amazing moments for all of you.

Till next time........

One Second at a Time

I have learned many lessons in this last year. In fact, I have probably had more life skills training in the last 8-12 months than I have had in all the other 54 years of my life combined. You know the biggest lesson I have learned? I don't know me at all. In fact, much of what I thought I knew....I really didn't.

That is a strange statement to make with all the years I have lived. You would think by this time, I would be approaching wise...but I am not. In fact, I realize that my wisdom in this life is very limited. And all that sage advice I have given others? I am beginning to think that it was complete and utter BS. That's right. Most of that advice was unsolicited and therefore fell into the category of none of my business. That which was asked for, was me saying to them, what I would actually like to be true in my world but was not. So yeah....BS. 

And NO! I am not being self deprecating. I am being totally and 100% honest. That too is something new to me in the respect that I have spent a great deal of time lying to myself and probably lying to others based on the lies I told myself. Again....not self loathing, just a good dose of honesty.

So, we have established that my wisdom is limited and I haven't got a clue who I am or what I want to be when I grow up....and you know what? That is perfectly okay. It's not about what I don't know, but rather it is about what I know that I don't know and that I acknowledge I don't know it. Confused yet?

These last few months have put me on a journey that I had no idea I needed to go on, nor do I think I even wanted to go on, but I was left with no choice. It was either face life and the reality of all that is my world or spend the rest of my days in denial and misery.

One of the most important things I am learning is that I have spent my entire adult life doing for others so that they might see me as "good enough." What the hell? What is good enough? Who is the measurer of "enough" and why am I holding myself to a standard that I am not even sure exists? I have literally made myself miserable trying to get people to tell me I was good enough, when the only one that really mattered was the person staring back at me in my mirror. WOW! That was some deep and complex realizations.

Another thing I have learned is that I have been waiting for someone or some thing to make me happy. Again....what the hell? I have handed over complete and total control of my life to some non-existent entity. The reality is, there is no one or nothing out there that has the power to make me happy. The only one that has that kind of power and control is......wait for it......ME! And again....WOW! The control that I have been searching for all of these years has been right  here all along.

Finally, I have lived in fear for the last 18 years. Tis' true. From 2000 to 2002, just about every fear I had at the time was realized. I had a premature, special needs child that hung between life and death, I lost my husband and I lost my mother. Since that moment, I have spent all of these years waiting for the other shoe to drop and often living with self-fulfilling prophecies. Yep.....what the hell yet again?!

Fear has become my way of life and integrated itself into just about every breath I take and every decision I make. There is nothing fearless about my life or me as a person. It is all fear-based and even just saying that makes me feel sad. What a waste of 18 years that I can never get back.

The good news is, you can teach an old dog new tricks and this old dog is learning. Yes, acknowledgment of my past behavior and the acceptance to know that I can't go back and change a thing but I can learn from it and move forward are amazing realizations. That is why these last few weeks I have done my best to take only learning moments from the past and leave the rest behind. I forgive myself for every moment wasted in fear, for every time I allowed myself to feel less than or not good enough and for every time I turned my power over to someone else or even nothing at all. It has been somewhat freeing, as if I have been climbing out of quick sand that all but devoured me.

I have also realized that along with having no control over the past, I also have no control over the future. It is very easy to fall into fearful thinking when you try to control that which hasn't even happened yet. I have given myself way too much "imagined" power over things that I know nothing of. I cannot predict the future and therefore giving it too much thought puts me into a power struggle where I truly have no power. In that battle....I will always lose. 

What I can control is the here and now. The moment. So I am taking my life back, one second at a time. For one second I can focus on the present. For one second I can put fear in my rear view mirror and be grateful for what I have instead of worrying about what I don't. For one second, I can look in the mirror and ask myself what "I" need right now.....and for this second....that is exactly what I am doing.

These are all pretty hefty realizations and they have come fairly fast. Granted, they may have been a bit forced as I was out of other options, but it seems that they are steering me on a whole new path I have yet to go down. They are changing how I think and how I focus my time and effort. They are making me take stock of what I have and not worry about what I don't and they are making me live in the moment, leaving the past and present to take care of themselves.

So why I am writing all of this on this particular blog? Because this blog is/was designed to help me to help myself not just be a healthier me, but to be a better me body, mind and spirit. That is what I am doing.

Today, I decided to let go of a fear and go on a walk. Now this may sound funny to you, being afraid of going on a walk, but it wasn't to me. It had been since 2016 the last time I went on a walk. At that time I was going 5 miles 3-5 times per week. Since that time though, I had let myself go. I wasn't eating right and I had gotten next to no exercise. I was literally terrified that I would get 10 feet down the street and that I wouldn't be able to catch my breath or that my legs, heart and body in general just wouldn't be up for.....exercise. This morning though, I knew that the only way to find out if my fear was real or exaggerated was to simply....do it. I gave myself the goal of 1 mile and I took off. Guess what? My breathing was fine. My legs, heart and body were fine and not only did I go a mile, but I managed 1.71 miles and I felt fine. The added benefit was that being out lifted my spirits and gave me some much needed time with nature and the present. 

As I walked, I was able to open my mind to what was going on in the moment. I did not allow myself thoughts of anything that happened before the walk or anything that "might" happen after. I stayed strictly in the moment and enjoyed the early fall morning. The air was humid and not a leaf moved. The ground was dotted with moisture from an early morning shower and everything felt clean. The trees were still in full green splendor and the grass was luxurious and soft with all of the recent rains.  I enjoyed seeing the fall flowers that were feeling safe enough to start blooming in the absence of the heat and the cloud cover and grayness gave my soul just a twitch of fall longing.

While enjoying the moment, I was also able to ponder the many reasons I have to be grateful in the here and now and as I listed them in my head, I realized that regardless of anything else, I am blessed. I also realized that what I have is enough and who I am is enough. It was a pretty good feeling for an early onset of fall morning.

Where is this all going to go? That is a question that I have no answer for. Anything past this moment is unwritten and therefore subject to surprise, change and the twisty turns that make life so interesting and unpredictable. The future is also not my business. My business resides in the moment and how I can make those moments count to learn about who I am, what I want and how I am going to get there. And I will take this journey.....one second at a time. 

My Truth and the Lies We Tell Ourselves

Soooooo.......let's just pretend that almost 18 months hasn't gone by since my last blog post here. *Poof* forgotten.

Lies! I've talked about them before and likely, I will talk about them again.

Usually the biggest lies we tell ourselves are about ourselves. With our own body image it is really hard to be honest sometimes, especially as we get older and our bodies change. Truthfully though, I have always had a warped image of my body and therefore been a damn good self deceiver when it came to.....me!

Now bare with me as I start pointing fingers. I am fully aware as an adult where the fault lies with my diet, exercise and health in general. However, I didn't just frivolously jump on the bandwagon that led me here. No, I was shamed and in some ways, forced into it.

As a very young kid, I was a picky eater and very skinny. I was tiny from my head to my toes. I even had a dentist tell me once that I had the tiniest teeth he had ever worked on. I remember still wearing a size 6 little girls long after my friends were in size 8's and 10's. I was not a food lover and spent many an hour sitting at the table long after everyone else was through eating, because I wouldn't eat my food. Then, my mother who was also very thin and who had always had the metabolism of a hummingbird, got a divorce. That divorce did us all in I think.

My mother began to turn to food as comfort during this time and her once active lifestyle was replaced with what I now believe was depression. She began preparing large fattening meals and supplementing with fast food. After she put on about 20 pounds and started feeling physically like crap (mom had Lupus and a good diet is crucial to Lupus survival) she joined Weight Watchers and took it all off in 6 weeks. As far as I went, I had taken a liking to homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, scalloped potatoes, pizza and hamburgers and yes....I put on some weight but mostly my metabolism was still pretty good and my weight was more puberty related.

Looking back, had my mother just changed all of our diets over to more of a Weight Watchers mind set and not focused so heavily on weight, scales and body image, I might not ever have gone down the road I did. The icing on the cake for me though(no pun intended), was my mom taking me to the doctor for a physical and the doctor telling "me" not her, that I had put on 5 pounds in the last year but that I hadn't grown any taller, therefore if I didn't go on a "diet" right now, I was going to be "fat!" Yep! My self image was pretty much in the toilet at 11 years old.

From that moment on, I was on a lifelong journey of self-love vs. self-loathing, binge eating, diet pills, laxatives, anorexia and obesity. I judged myself the way I felt the world judged me and that was by how I looked. This was validated by peoples attitudes toward me based on my weight.

During my high school years, I was not skinny by any stretch, but I was not fat either. At that time in society though, the world worshiped "skinny" to the point of no butt and no boobs. Now you could get by with the bigger boobs if you had a tiny waist and butt, but if you had a voluptuous figure at all, you were "fat!" Since I was only 5'1", I had no waist, but I did have boobs and a butt and because I wasn't bikini body, waif thin.....I was viewed as and talked about as fat. Then, my senior year in high school, right at Thanksgiving I got sick. I couldn't eat for about a week and being young and having a decent metabolism, I dropped about 10 pounds, which was a lot for my tiny body. Then my mother got sick and we thought she had heart issues. The worry and stress over that caused me to drop another 5 pounds. Then I got a crush on a guy at school. My obsession with him caused another 5 to come off. By the time I went back to school after Christmas break, I was 20 pounds down and it seemed that everyone noticed it. Guys who had never given me the time of day suddenly found me "interesting" and girls suddenly either got friendlier or meaner depending on whether they found my new weight loss a threat or not. Even my parents were noticing. Suddenly my dad was "proud" of the way I looked and was taking me out to buy brand new clothes, something he never did before.

There was a problem with all of this though. I was still me and I still liked scalloped potatoes and hamburgers and once I was no longer sick, worried and infatuated, my appetite was back and I was hungry. When I started gaining back the first 5 pounds, I panicked. I liked thin me and I wasn't going to give it up. That is when I took out stock in laxatives. The fact that I have any colon left today is a miracle as I would down literally boxes of laxatives after I ate. It worked but one of the nasty side effects (aside from the obvious) was that taking that many laxatives dehydrates you and dehydration caused me horrific migraines. At the time I didn't realize the correlation, but now I know why I spent the last half of my senior year literally in agony all the time with migraines. Apparently though, the number on the scales was worth ALL the side effects of the laxatives.

It wasn't long before I found myself completely addicted to my scales. I would literally weigh myself 8-10 times a day. I had no understanding at the time that your body weight fluctuates throughout the day and therefore I would panic if I weighed half a pound more in the evening than I did in the morning. By this time, laxatives were not enough for me and so I began not eating at all or eating very minimally. The pounds were dropping and people were telling me how great I looked by I was literally starving. I wanted to eat so badly, but each morsel that went into my mouth I felt guilty about. Peoples admiration for how great I looked was worth everything to me.....including my health, so the starvation continued.

I was never a true bulimic simply because I hate throwing up. I could never force myself to throw up no matter how much I tried. What I could do though, was drink until I puked, which I got very good at. My friends and I would go out to the bars and clubs and we would drink. I drank a lot....at least for my size....and every time I would end up puking sick and hungover. The weird thing was, I never liked alcohol. To this day I am still not a fan, but back then, drinking was a means to an end and each morning after a night out of drinking and then throwing up, no matter how bad the hangover, I was on the scales checking to see how much weight I had lost.

Eventually I couldn't stand the drinking anymore or the laxatives and I started to gain a few pounds back. Panic again began to set in and then I learned of a doctor who was an osteopath, who practiced over the state line. He was pricey as you had to pay out of pocket (can't imagine why he turned none of this into insurance). You would go in and get blood work done and then he would give you diet pills. Phendometrazine and something else, along with a vitamin. Yeah....that vitamin helped a lot. Looking back, the doctor was criminal for giving me, a 5'1" girl who weighed 100 pounds soaking wet, diet pills....but he did. 

The diet pills in my mind were the answer to all my prayers. By taking the pills, I was never hungry. I could literally go without food for days without the pesky side effect of hunger. I would eat something unhealthy like a bag of chips, a candy bar or a burger every couple of days just to keep from keeling over, but other than that....nothing. I was literally starving myself to death. I don't think I cared though because the world was giving me "positive" feedback. I say positive loosely as in my warped brain, my mom being worried about my weight loss and people telling me that I was getting "too thin," were positive. Even my dad told me I needed to eat more, where as before when I was heavier and healthy, he told me I looked like a "hog." No one had ever told me I was "too thin" before and I loved it.

It wasn't until after I met my husband and he convinced me that he found me beautiful regardless of how I looked, that I started to get a handle on my eating. By handle, I mean I began to eat regularly and not worry about the scales. Then after I had my middle son, the weight grabbed a hold and didn't want to let go. I did get back down to a healthy weight after he was born and then I found out I was pregnant again. During this pregnancy though, my body had changed so much and I put on a lot of weight. Following my youngest son's birth, the bottom fell out of my world and then the next three years I dealt with the NICU, losing my husband, a hysterectomy, a special needs child, a teenager grieving and going wild, losing my mom and full on depression caused by anti-depressants. (Yes....I said caused by anti-depressants and that is another story for another day).

My weight kept climbing and my energy was declining. I felt horrible all of the time and my doctor just kept wanting to put me on more anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills. I was in a limbo of exhaustion, hunger and frustration. Then as I was sitting in his office one day, I read an article about hypothyroidism. Everything in the article spoke to me. I knew this was my issue and when I finally got called back I told the doctor what I thought. I literally had to argue with him to get him to test me, but low and behold, my thyroid was so out of whack and so slow, it was helping to contribute to everything else that was out of whack in my life. Once I started Synthroid and weaned myself off of all the other unnecessary crap, I started feeling like a human again. That being said though, by this point my metabolism was so slow and my eating habits were so bad, that for the next few years, food was my friend and my weight climbed.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine talked me into starting a food program called Trim Healthy Mama. She had actually started trying to get me to do it two years prior, but I am a hard sell. I really believed that I would always be overweight and that fat and unhealthy were how I would spend the rest of my days. Doing THM though, I learned I was wrong. In three months I lost about 30 lbs and I felt amazing. I was healthy and I was actually happy and never hungry. I did well for quite sometime and then..............

This is where I would normally throw in a multitude of excuses as to why I quit taking care of me such as......a child on drugs, another child's impending surgery, almost losing my house, almost losing a grand child and the list goes on and on, but the TRUTH is......I just gave up and let life overwhelm me. It was my fault, my choice and although I might be able to blame my start on this unhealthy path on others, my current issues are my own fault. I obviously know how to live healthy, I just made the choice not to.

So the other day I had to go to the doctor for a tick bite(another fun story for another day). My blood pressure was a scary 154/114 and my weight was....well let's just say......not pretty. What the heck was I doing to myself? Why was I doing it? Was I not worth better?

Body image and the lies we tell ourselves about our body, our health and our eating habits can literally kill us, especially the older we get. So here's my truth. I am not perfect, but I am definitely a worthwhile person. In the big scheme of things, I still have some good years ahead....if I stay healthy. I have health problems that would be made so much better if I lost weight. I don't feel good about me, the way I look or how I feel. I want to lose weight. I know how to lose weight, eat, not be hungry and be healthy......and most importantly.....I am worth everything it takes to do it. I deserve to be the very best version of me I can be! And that folks is the truth!