Maintaining through a difficult time....

Two weeks ago today my mother in law passed away. She fought lung cancer like a beast for 10+ years and about 3 weeks ago she ended up in the emergency room with pneumonia. 6 days later she was gone. Even though we were blessed with 10+ years of time with her that we really didn't think we would have; this death still came as quite a shock to all of us. One week before winding up in the hospital she was watching my daughter's spring concert. Just 3 short weeks before she passed, she planned and hosted a huge family get together for a memorial for another family member.

Picture taken October 2010

All that being said it has obviously been a pretty tough 3 weeks for my family. When dealing with a difficult time it is SO easy to just slack off on any healthy eating plan. The week that she was in the hospital my husband was rarely home for dinner so I found myself not cooking for the 3 of us. I think part of it was I was feeling stressed as well and didn't want to be bothered with it. I was focused on how he was doing and on just doing what I needed to do to take care of the kids and prepare them for the inevitable. I tried to stay on track as well as I could and I was totally fine with that. 

November 2015 - last Christmas card picture taken

In my last blog post I mentioned that on April 29th when I got on the scale I had officially lost 11 pounds from my "recommitment" weight on March 20th. My scale said 229.6 on that day. The next week (on May 6th - the same day we lost my mother in-law), my scale registered 229. I managed to still lose .6lbs when dealing with this terrible time in my family's life. Well, the hard times were just beginning really. As hard as it is to wait for the inevitable to happen; after it happens you have a whole new world to deal with. My children have never experienced a death in the family before (other than a pet). To lose a grandmother is ALWAYS hard;  but to lose a grandma whom they saw on pretty much a weekly or bi-weekly basis is something I can't even imagine. It was hard for me when I lost my first grandparent and they lived in a different state and I probably saw them once or twice a year! 

Ok. So my diet/exercise/healthy living plan/whatever was the LAST thing on my mind starting May 6th. Obviously when dealing with death you quickly realize that there are more important things than how you look. However, you also realize how SHORT life is and you want to do whatever is possible to prolong that life. Interesting concept. 

For the week after her passing while we had to deal with planning a funeral, celebrating not only Mother's Day on the 8th; but also the fact that this year Mother's Day would have been her 68th birthday; and then ultimately having the funeral, I did not worry about my food choices and did not track anything. Did I drink wine? You bet I did! Did I stop at Wendy's to get lunch prior to going to the funeral home to help plan the funeral? Yup. Did I feel guilty or stressed about any of the decisions I was making? Nope! I still got on the scale on the next Friday and miraculously I saw staring back at me 229. I managed to maintain through probably the hardest week of my life (so far). 

On to this past week and I felt a renewed sense of motivation. I got right back on track. I went to jazzercise on Monday, got on the treadmill AND went to my strength class on Tuesday, went back to jazzercise on Wednesday, and got on the treadmill AND went to strength class on Thursday. I got on the scale this morning and still saw 229. Of course there was a small part of me that was disappointed that it hadn't gone down; but I keep in mind that I took the ENTIRE week off last week. There was more eating and drinking than usual and although I got back on track on Monday; that was only 4 days ago. 

So I'm happy. I'm happy that even when dealing with this particularly difficult time I have NOT gained weight. I have not stressed about my weight and whether or  not that scale jumped back above 230. And even though I've thought about it (because obviously I'm focused on losing weight), I have not stressed about how maintaining for 2 weeks in a row (and only losing .6 the week before) is slowing down my "average weight loss". I really DON'T CARE! I am trying really hard to just focus on the fact that if I can be on track more than I am off I will lose weight. I am trying even harder to not stress about it. When I stress about it or when I start to think about wanting to lose 20lbs overnight is when I inevitably fail. I know I've said it before, but when I am STRESSING about losing weight is when I GAIN. So, the goal is to keep trying, but NOT stress. Even if I average "only" 1/2 pound per week, I will weigh 26 pounds less in a year than I do now. It may not be 50 pounds, it may not be all the weight I have to lose, but it will be 26 pounds less than I weigh now and that's all that matters.

Time for an update!!

On March 23rd I wrote a blog post about how I started this online "biggest loser" challenge. Then, on April 21st I wrote another blog post with the results of that challenge. It's only May 1st, but I felt like it was time for another update; because for once things are staying positive for me!

I feel like I might actually be finding my balance. I am really trying to be realistic and patient in this process this time. Back in September 2015 I started a process in which I was being pretty strict with my eating during the week and I was allowing myself to be more relaxed on the weekend. I was losing 4.8-5lbs a month when I was doing this. By December I was down 16.6 pounds and feeling pretty good. But then I got a little too relaxed and by Jan 1st I had gained back 5.2lbs. I was actually OK with this and was then trying to get back on track. The problem was I somehow got back into my old way of thinking and I wanted to lose weight more quickly. I don't know why I didn't just go back to what I was doing in the fall, but I didn't. While trying to get back on track I eventually gained back all but about 3lbs. I guess the good news is that I got it back under control before I gained back everything I had lost (plus 10 pounds). The bad news is that I'm still not back down to where I was in December and that's just kind of annoying.

In March a friend told me about the biggest loser challenge and I decided why not? But, the problem was that I was still trying to figure out what to do that would help me lose weight "quickly". And frankly, this group fed into that thinking since it's a 30 day group and one of the prizes is for the greatest amount of weight lost (percentage) in the month. This pressure got to me and I was probably more off than on during that 30 days. But in the end I still lost over 7lbs in that month. That's more than I was losing in the fall and I was perfectly happy with my rate of loss in the fall.

Somewhere in this process I stopped worrying about how FAST I was going to lose this weight and started focusing on doing it in a way that I can sustain for the rest of my life. There is a reason why I am still well over 200lbs. There is a reason why I keep gaining the weight back after I lose it. I like love food. There are times when I will literally get mad if I can't just eat what I want. I need to figure out a way to take any negative feels and guilt away from food. Food is food. It tastes good. It fuels your body and sometimes it just fills your stomach without adding much nutritional value to your day......and that has GOT to be OK sometimes (for me).

I am absolutely thrilled to report that I have seemed to get my mind in the right place again. As much as I might want to be at or near a certain arbitrary number by my 40th birthday, if I'm not but I'm still losing weight I'll be smaller than I am now. Did you follow me there? I feel like that wasn't a great sentence! LOL

Basically, I came to the realization that it doesn't really matter if I weigh 160 pounds on my 40th birthday or 180 pounds; as long as I don't weight 240 pounds. I look at my mom who has lost quite a bit of weight recently. She actually isn't even sure how much weight she has lost because it depends on when she starts counting from ;) But, when she breaks it down she really hasn't lost the weight all that fast. But to me (and I think even to her), it feels like she was overweight yesterday and she's not anymore today. We all know how quickly a year passes, right? I can either be happy with slow weight loss and in a year from now be thinking, "wow, look how far I've come!" Or, I can focus on trying to lose weight quickly, give up because it's too hard, and in a year look back and think, "how the hell am I still 240+ pounds?!?!" 

Having said all that, I was super excited on Friday when I weighed in and saw that I am officially down 11 pounds from re-starting on March 20th. If I take Sept 1st as my "starting weight" that means I'm down a total of 13.6 pounds. And if I take my highest weight ever from 2014 when I started the Whole30, I am down 21 pounds. Best yet, I weigh less in April 2016 than I did in April 2015. 

One more thing I want to discuss (this was actually what inspired me to even write a post today and I haven't even gotten to it yet)! This week I decided that I want to start training for races again. I really enjoyed when I was training for and completing races in 2011 and 2012. I decided to look at what my weight was when I completed each of the 4 previous half marathon's I've done. I came to the conclusion that IF I do a half marathon in October, I may very well weigh less than I did for 3 of those half marathons! This showed me that I can do it! So, there's a 10k in June and I'm going to do it. There's a half marathon in October and my goal is to do that one as well. I'm going to wait until closer to that date to make the actual decision; but I'm pretty confident that I will be doing it. I got on the treadmill today and did 5 miles. The 5 miles took me 1:13:18, which amounts to a 14:40 min/mile. Seeing as I am starting over I am very excited about this! Anything less than a 15 min/mile is something that makes me happy because I am pretty confident that I'll only get faster from here! 

Ok. I'll stop talking now. I feel good. I feel like I can keep doing what I am doing and actually make this work for me. I hope my posts continue to be this positive. I know there will be bumps in the road; but I'm hoping that I can be positive enough to not let those completely derail me! 

And FYI - since I've started sharing numbers on my blog; let me just tell you that my weigh in Friday put me into a new decade. I started in the 40's and am now in the 20's (29.6, but still in the 20's)! I look forward to leaving each decade behind to never see it again!