Really tired of saying this

Once again, I am SOOO tired of saying I messed up.  Any time I decide that I am going to do this program 100% like it's my job, I wind up binging.  So I am going to have to stop doing that.

I am having a terrible time with binging in bed,.  Now, this may sound like a no-brainer to everyone else, but it finally occurred to me that, if I can't control the bed time eating, I need to stop eating in bed at all.  Period.  As my sister would say "Small, sustainable changes". 

I'm not sure when I started this eating in bed thing.  I remember doing it when I was in Weight Watchers after moving back to Spokane.  I didn't binge like this before then.  Rather, what I did, was drink.  Often.  And a lot.  When I first started WW, I planned my Friday night to include a liter and a half bottle of wine.  I can't do that now - what if Dad needed to go to the hospital in the middle of the night? 

I have pulled out my old Weight Watcher calculator for the old Points system.  I may go back to that - I was very successful on it.  But first, I will try this.  I will eat from my list and that is it.  As soon as I start obsessing, I start binging.  And THAT will get me back to where I was when I started.

I have to admit, though, that all the deaths around me this year have really gotten to me.  Especially this last one where my friend died from Cellulitis.  Being hospitalized with an extreme case of this is what got me started on this road to health to start with.  Three years ago, when this same friend was in town and we had planned to have a mini-high school reunion, I missed it because I was in the hospital.  With Cellulitis.  I came close to losing my foot the first time.  I didn't realize it was such a serious thing.  When the doctor told me I needed to be in the hospital or I would die, I thought he was exaggerating.  Guess not.

Well, the sun has been out and is quickly disappearing.  I need to get showered, dressed and get the dog out for our walk before it all goes away and the rain starts up again.

Here's to another day.  I'm having a hard time finding a hopeful note to end on here.  Sigh.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Today is sunny outside.  Not particularly warm, but sunny.  I love, no I need the sun.  I didn't realize how much my body needs sunshine until I moved back up North after living in the South for 11 winters.  It doesn't have to be particularly warm - it will only get up into the 60s today - but it does need to be sunny.  Besides, I have plenty of  lovely sweaters to keep me warm.

After deciding to not worry about dieting and just staying where I am for a while, I realize I am just not happy here.  I am not expecting my weight, or weightlessness, to make me happy by itself.  But I want to be securely into the "overweight" category, not teetering back and forth between that and technically obese.  As a result, just for today, I am going to work my program like it is my job.  I will see how I feel at the end of the day.  I will not obsess over it - just do it.

And, yes, the sunshine has a lot to do with this.  It lifts my mood, lifts my soul.  It has been a pretty icky year - way too much death around me.  Way too many broken hearts, too.  But that doesn't mean that I have to fall, too.  If I have the strength to do so, I need to stand up straight and tall.  Today, I have the strength.  Today, I will walk on sunshine.

Going Shopping

I am off for the next 2 days.  And I am going to go SHOPPING!

I love to shop.  I love grocery shopping.  The only thing I don't love shopping for is shoes.  I have challenged feet and it is not fun trying to find shoes to fit both feet when one ankle is 1 1/2" larger than the other.  But I digress.

It is cold and rainy outside.  Fall is here and, I am told, Winter will be right behind it.  I gave my sister my winter coats because they are too big for me this year and hers are too big for her.  She fits mine great.  So I will be heading to some thrift stores looking for winter coats and big sweaters.  I have some nice winter coats, but they are not heavy enough to walk the dog in the cold with the wind blowing.  They are great for church or when I am going from the car to a building and back again.  But not for walking the dog.

I realize the no one particularly cares about my shopping trip.  But, once a month, I get 2 days off in a row.  Count them - 2!  And I am often struggling to find something to DO on those days.  I don't know how to just hang out.  I don't want to sit downstairs and watch my recorded TV shows - it triggers eating binges.  I can't sit in my usual chair in the living room because I will work and Dad will not let my son take care of him.  So I need to be out of the house.  And, this time, I actually have things I need to shop FOR! 

Ok, it doesn't take much to make me happy.  But, today, is a ME day.  And tomorrow, too.  I am going to find someone to give me a massage.  I will find a winter coat.  I will find big warm sweaters to wear with leggings.  And some cute boots to wear with them, too.  I have been thinking about this since Friday.  Granted, I would get by just fine without buying a single thing.  But I will.I even have a coupon at the thrift store.  Happy dance!

Next month, I will be going on vacation (I get a week a year off), so I will go visit my friends in Florida.  I will stay with my former boyfriend.  Oh, yeah, that has its own advantages!  And visit my old work place, Weight Watchers meeting and old haunts.  And I will relax, and walk HIS dog, and stick my feet in the Gulf again.  And I will have cute clothes to wear, too.

AND I already have my "to go" foods in my purse.  I will be fine.  I will enjoy myself.  And on Wednesday, I will be recharged and ready to take on another week of Dad, Puffy, kids and all that entails.  I will, again, have the patience and compassion to be surrounded by broken hearts - both physical and emotional.

I've been thinking

I really am thinking that this might be a good place to begin maintenance.  It isn't that I don't want to lose 20 more pounds.  I do.  But the more I concentrate on it, the more binging I do.  And I just don't want to put my body through that anymore.  I don't want to put my mind through it either.  And I especially don't want to put my soul through it anymore.

I am afraid of this.  But I want to see if I can do it.  If I lose more, cool.  If I don't, I am actually quite happy where I am.  I would be happier to maintain in another 5 or 10 pounds - over the 180 lip and securely into the 170s.  But this is less than I have been in so many years I don't even remember the last time I weighed 180.  So, lets call it good.  And stay here.  And stop worrying.  And give my soul a rest.

God knows, I have enough on my plate without driving myself nuts trying to be perfect.

Day 1 revisited. Again.

I am on my third Day 1.  In a row.  I bought some different bars and have eaten 3 boxes of them in the past 3 nights.  Along with chocolate chip cookies, a bagel, extra snacks.  You name it, I have eaten it.  And all this eating has been done in the last 3 hours of my day.  It is ridiculous.

Today, I am crabby.  God, am I crabby.  I am trying to not take it out on Dad who can't help being an old old man.  Who has no control over whether or not he chokes.  Who rolls his jeans up nearly to his knees because he thinks they are supposed to not touch his shoes.  Who irritates the crap out of me some days.  Like today.  He tries to help by pouring my coffee, then drips it all over the off white carpet Mom has always insisted on having.  Today, there are parts of me that hates him.  Ok I wrote that down just to get it out and look at it.  I think the reason he irritates me so much is because, on many levels, I keep expecting him to be the man he used to be.  And he isn't.

Parts of the old "him" remain.  He is kind, loving, generous and willing to help in any way he can.  And that is the rub.  He just can't.  He is also a willful 5 year old with ADD.  He was a brilliant man and now he isn't.  His age and physical issues have taken that away.  He was strong and now he isn't.  He is a doddering old man.  Granted, he is nearly 88 years old.  And, most of the time, clueless. 

And this is not the reason I am so crabby.  I am crabby because I don't like ME today.  And when I don't like ME, I don't like him much either.  I never had this kind of trouble being kind and patient with Mom.  But I was new and fresh to this job and she only lived in the house for 6 months after I got here and in a nursing home for 7 more after that before she died. 

Such irony.  The biggest fear both of my parents had was that they would become victims of dementia.  And they both did.  I can do everything I can to avoid it, but who will take care of me when/if it happens to me?  My folks have enough money saved to pay me to be the caretaker and to take care of their own needs. I have nothing.  But I refuse to worry about that today.  Those things will take care of themselves somehow.

So, today, I will do my best.  I will follow my Day 1 program.  Again.  I will take the dog for a walk in the sunshine.  I will put those damn bars in the freezer, change the cat's litter box, buy some cat food, go to the grocery store, do the laundry, cook dinner, keep Dad from hurting himself or anyone else, keep my mouth shut when I realize how few pairs of underwear are in the laundry, take care of my 12 year old nephew for the night and I Will Be Kind.  To Dad, to my nephew, the dog, my son and even to me.  I will breathe all day long.  I will put one foot in front of the other all day long.  I will look past Dad's frailties and deficiencies and focus on his heart - both literally and figuratively.  I will just accept that I am surrounded by broken hearts in both the physical and emotional sense, and do whatever I can to comfort.  Even myself.  Maybe especially myself.

So tired of this

I am so tired of doing this.  I do well on my eating program, then BAM! something triggers me and I binge.  This time it was a box of food that I bought from a friend who was finished with Medifast.  There were singles of things I really like - like s'mores crunch bars, some Kay's snacks, and a few other things.  Well, I ate them ALL last night.  Again, this morning, I am back on Day 1.  I am back on track.  But I am also in mid-carb hangover.  My body feels icky.  My mind is cloudy.  I am depressed. And I have a green cloud around me from the gaseous emissions coming from my body.

I will be fine for 2 more days, then I have 2 boxes of food coming in with some bars I have never tried.  This company also includes free samples - often bars of some sort that I can just grab and shove in my mouth.  I will be really really tempted to take a bite of each different bar that I ordered.  Sigh.  I will try to avoid it.  I hope this will be the time that I don't go for it.

So, ok.  Day 1 (again) is almost done.  I am looking through my food and finding that I have food in my "stash" from the beginning of my Medifast journey.  Some of it has already expired, which just means that the vitamins may break down a little.  That's fine - I take a multi every day.  I also realized that I have enough brownies and chocolate chip soft bakes to eat nothing BUT those for more than 2 weeks.  I'm not going to, but I could.  I have a bag of 19 brownies/soft bakes that are expired in July or fixing to expire this fall.  I will get to eating those, although they are not my favorites.

I have been swinging around the 180 mark since May.  It is now September.  My new goal - to be solidly in the 170s by the end of the month.

What am I afraid of?  Let's just get 'er done!

Help! I'm Surrounded!

Today, during my walk with the dog, I was ruminating about my life.  I mean, what else does one do when walking the dog?  We go on our adventure of sniffing and peeing.  We find it works best if I sniff and he pees.  The other way around caused way too much confusion in the neighborhood.  And the restraining orders were becoming an issue.

Anyway, I realized that I am working on getting healthy while being surrounded by illness and death.  Way too many deaths have happened around me this year.  And illness?  Gee, where to start.  There is Dad with his weak heart, the dog with his assorted illnesses, my son who is bipolar and suffers from severe anxiety disorder, my daughter's difficulties, and on and on. 

I am a person who tends to not just sense, but take on, the feelings of those around me, especially my kids.  So when my child is in crisis, so am I.  I often don't know where my own feelings and opinions end and theirs begin.  I am working on finding my edges, my borders if you will.  But I am not firm on them yet.  My kids are both very strong personalities who tend to blow up and then it's over.  I am usually downwind of the blowup and, while they get it out and get over it, I don't.  I carry the stress of the situation long after it ends.  So, afterwards, they are fine and I am not.  My son is particularly bad.  He lives with us and I find myself walking on eggshells around him.  He is very loving, smart and tender.  He is also very volatile. Much like his father, even though he was raised by me.  This may sound bad, but I am relieved that I rarely see him for long.  He is my relief for my times off, but otherwise we don't see him much.  He gets up at around 1pm, is gone by 2pm and doesn't come home until long after Dad and I are in bed.  Phew.

So I often walk around with my stomach tied up in knots for days at a time, waiting for the next thing; waiting for the next crisis.  And then I find myself anticipating these crises.  For instance, my cat is 16 1/2.  She is really old.  One day in the fairly near future I will have to either make a decision concerning her life or I will find her dead.  Soon, I will have to tell her goodbye. I wait for my Dad to have a heart attack.  Or the dog to go into heart failure.  Or, maybe just maybe, the sky will actually fall.  Perhaps this is the reason why, even though I have lost a lot of weight, my blood pressure has not come down?

Has anyone ever read the Sweet Pickle book called The Very Worried Walrus?  I highly recommend it.  It explains a lot.

So now, after spewing all this, I come to the answer to my question to myself during the walk this morning - how do I get healthy when surrounded by illness and death?  The answer is, I have no choice.  I have to get healthy, even while surrounded.  I have to maintain my health and try to improve it.  I Have To.  Because to not move in the direction of health and strength means that I become part of the illness and death.  It means that I lose the ability to help anyone else.  It means that I lie down, give up and die.  And how will that help anything?  Who, then, would take care of Dad?  Of Puffy? Or anything else? 

So, each morning, I get up with the intention of improving my health.  Some days I fall on my face.  Most days, I do not.  But every single morning, I get up.  I take care of what I need to take care of.  I do the best I can with the tools I have at hand.  And if I fall, I fall.  And then I get up and keep going.  Every. Single. Day.

Not such a good day

Eating-wise, today has not been such a good day.  It started out great.  I ate my breakfast, mid-morning meal and lunch right on schedule and exactly as planned.  Then, at 2:30, I cracked.  I don't really know why, but I did.  I decided to taste the peanut butter cookies in the drawer.  I know, big mistake! Before I blinked, I had eaten all 3 of them.  And these are not small cookies.  These are about 4" in diameter.  I washed that down with 2 packets of sandwich crackers with 6 in each packet and 2 South Beach snack bars. 

The only good thing about all this is that the cookies are gone now.  But this all happened only hours after spending another $272 on Medifast food which I have decided will be my last purchase of them.  During this past week, I have also spent about $240 at American Bariatrics and $50 at Diet Direct.  I decided that I was not going to spend any more money on outside food as I only have about 20 lbs left to lose.  I have enough food here to get me through all the transition and well into maintenance, provided I stop binging.  I said I would remind myself that every bite I take that doesn't take me closer to my goal is costing me money.  And you know what?  I did exactly that.  And I didn't care. 

So now I am feeling my blood vibrate from the sugar and my belly hurts.  I Knew that eating that sugar would make my stomach feel like I have been drinking acid.  And I would hate to check my blood sugar right now!  With the only diabetic in the house now gone, I don't have the means to do that anyway.  But it would be interesting to see.

Ok, I am going to concentrate on the positive.  The cookies are gone. I will eat my turkey tenderloin and green beans for dinner and have my pretzels at bed time.  I will have my jello after 7 tonight.  In other words,. I am back on plan.  Actually, this is the first time I have binged in the middle of the day and then stopped.  Regardless that the only reason I stopped was because nothing we had here sounded even remotely good.  Still, I stopped. It's too late to do anything about it.  I can't un-eat it.  So I will count that in the win column.  And go on with my life. Sigh.

Mister Pufferbelly

I took my Dad's 7 year old white Shih Tzu, named Puffy,  to the vet today for some routine shots.  In the past year, the little guy has developed wheat allergies, high blood pressure, cataracts and a severe double heart murmur.  This goes along with his congenital hip deformity. He can't hold down food very well lately - for what reason, we still don't know - so I cook his food.  Each week, I boil up 1 lb ground chicken breast and 2 scrubbed but unpeeled chopped up sweet potatoes.  This is his food for the week.  I supplement it with vitamins and a few treats. 

Since the heart murmur diagnosis, his reign of the underbelly of the supper table has been repealed.  He no longer licks bowls, gets fed under the table, "shares" Oreos with Dad or any of the other awful things he was getting away with.  He is a MUCH nicer dog to have around during meals.  He sleeps through them now. It's funny how hearing the vet use words like "extending the useful life of his heart" makes a difference when all the obnoxiousness of the dog whining didn't get through. He is beginning to lose the family nickname of "Rat Bastard".  We are getting his weight to a better level.  We walk at least a mile every day.  He is happy, active and goofy and most people who meet him think he is a puppy.  You would never know he has such severe health issues.

Today's checkup was not all that great.  His heart is the same, which is a good thing.  The same is definitely better than worse.  We think we found his heart murmur and high blood pressure early enough to avoid a lot of more severe heart damage.  The problem is his sight.  He is now blind in one eye and the cataract in the other eye is progressing pretty rapidly.  Before long, he will be totally blind.  Luckily, dogs are very resilient.  He has lost the sight in one eye this year and you would never know.  He doesn't act like he notices.  Perhaps the sight diminishes gradually enough that it seems natural to him.  I don't know.

I just know that it doesn't feel natural to me.  It makes me sad.  It has been a downright just sucky week.  Actually, it has been a pretty sucky year.  Too much death, too many bad things going on in our lives.  But I am also grateful.  Dad's health, while bad, is no worse.  His heart, while very weak, is no worse and maybe a touch better.  His mind and speech are deteriorating fairly quickly, but he is still "him" and I am so blessed to still have him here at nearly 88 years old.  And I am even more blessed to have the honor of caring for him at the end of his life just as I did my mother.  Just as they did for me at the beginning of mine.

And I count little Pufferbelly, aka Poofaloop, as a blessing as well.  He is sweet and cuddly.  He used to bark and whine when Mom got out of bed without assistance.  He does the same thing if Dad is not feeling well.  He sits on Dad's lap and they quiet each others' anxieties.  He's a good little guy and worth the extra thought.  My biggest hope is that he outlives Dad.  To that end, I will cook his food, give him his pills, take him for walks and do everything I can to "extend the useful life of his heart".  He has such a big heart for such a little body.