Sabotage vs Self Control: the battle for my midsection

I was hesitant to say it for a little while, but I think I am finally back in control.

I don't know why I allowed myself to be sabotaged.  Why did I give in to the constant barrage of junk food and just too much food that hunted me down for the last 10 months or so?  Why did I gain back so much weight that I worked so hard to lose in the first place?

It doesn't make sense to me.  I am infinitely happier when I am eating well and exercising and looking better and better every day.

I am miserable when I am eating junk and feeling full all the time and not exercising and busting out of my clothes.  Feeling cute is really important to me after spending too many years feeling unattractive and worthless, and I have been letting the cuteness I recaptured slip away.

I haven't been relying on God, and it is too hard on my own.  I need His power to get over these hurdles and I need people in my life to push me and keep me accountable.  So I have once again asked for help. 

A few weeks ago I started walking/half-heartedly jogging two miles every night with my friend Rocio, and I was disheartened when I didn't see or feel results right away.  But I kept it up, knowing that results would come, as I worked on getting my eating under control.  It wasn't hard to do during the week.  One day my roommate came into the kitchen and found me eating a cucumber.

Michelle: "Are you just eating a cucumber?"

Me: "Yep."

And it was good.

The real challenge was maintaining control at the vet on the weekends.  There is always so much food there.  Always. So. Much. Food.

Sabotage

 

Self Control

I didn't touch any of that stuff.  The last two weekends in a row I haven't succumbed to the lure of the bad food, instead bringing my own snacks.  It's just not worth it.  I hate how I feel when I eat that garbage!

 In the middle of last week, the scale finally started to move, and within three days it went down 12 pounds.  I was stoked!  When I went to work on Saturday, my scrub top was looser than it has been in a long time.  The weekend before it was like a sausage casing.

Sunday night I went out after work to have dinner with my family for my cousin's birthday, and I wore this dress, and I felt cute.  Knowing that I still have 30 pounds to lose to get back to my lowest weight from my original weight loss, I certainly didn't feel as good as I know I will, but this is a start.

Yesterday I went to the gym and I was back to feeling discouraged by my backsliding.  I was feeling fat and out of shape.  Instead of letting that feeling continue to sabotage me though, I am taking it as a challenge to get back to where I was and keep going from there.

There's no point in wallowing in my failures.  I am choosing to push forward and conquer this.

Today I'm feeling cute in my new tube top from Target.  My collar bones took a little vacation, but they're starting to come back again.  I love collar bones.

I have a lot of work to do, but I'm up for it.  I'm eating well again, and not even craving junk.  The other day I turned down fruit snacks!  I haven't been in control of the way I eat for almost a year, and being back in control feels amazing!

Fitness K8 or bust!

Alright.  My season of gluttony is officially over.  I'm sick of feeling like a sausage in all of my clothes and even in my skin.

Right now I'm wearing workout clothes because I went to the gym for the first time in months, and I wore the gym clothes all day because I knew I would be about 80 million times more likely to force myself to go if I was already dressed for it.  So on one hand that was smart, but on the other hand, the shirt I'm wearing is a tube top with another shirt over it, and the top of the tube is tiiiiiiiiiiight.  My armpit areas are in pain from the top of this shirt.

This is not good.  And I have no idea how I let this happen.  Why is it so easy to get out of good habits that make you feel amazing, and you practically have to move Heaven and Earth to reinstate those habits?  It literally takes an act of God, at least for me.  Because when I'm not relying on Him, I sink pretty low.

This is how my niece Lilly and I feel about my lack of self control:

I mean, I still look okay.  I haven't gone back up to my epic proportions from the dark years.  And apparently I like to take selfies with my right hand on my hip.  But I am missing my smaller self, and I wasn't even close to my goal yet.

So I have some new goals.  I want to lose 50 pounds in 100 days.  That's about 15 pounds a month, which is totally doable at my size.  I am going back to the gym and I have enlisted a friend to meet me there a couple times a week.  I'm also gonna be doing Blogilates (a free online personal trainer who is really great and posts new videos all the time and comes up with a workout calendar each month) videos every day.  I'm getting back to limiting my portions and not eating as many sugars and breads.  I don't cut anything out completely, but I know what should be limited.  I just need to listen to my body.  Right now I feel full pretty much all the time, and it doesn't feel good.

I don't want my face to look like this anymore:

I miss when it looked like this:

And in 3 months, it will again.  Adios to feeling gross!

Residual self-doubt

A good 98% of the time now, I have killer self-esteem.  I love how I have changed and I have learned to love my body.  I mean, sure... I wish I didn't have the fat that's still here and I know I'll never have a perfect body, but I love it.  I think it looks pretty good as I get more in shape and closer to the way God created my body to look.

I wish I knew as a teenager that I had a great body.  Not a great body like a swimsuit model, or one that makes men drool as they are unable to avert their eyes, but a great body in a healthy, great musculature, awesome build type of way.  I'm strong.  I'm built like an athlete, or a farmer.  My body was made to work hard and take care of people.  And I have an awesome butt.  It's true.  I don't even care, I would tell that to the Pope if I met him.  That's how much I love my butt.  Even when I was super fat, it was still a good butt!

I walk around with an air of confidence these days that gets me a lot of attention from guys, which I really appreciate, because I didn't have that for so long.  I don't mean to be conceited or vain or wrapped up in looks.  I am none of those things.  I know I'm not a supermodel.  I think a lot of it is about my general confidence and not even what I look like. 

But I truly enjoy being admired after being the girl that no one paid any attention to in that way for more than ten years.  That can really destroy a girl's spirits.  For realz.  It made me question my worth.  I know how hilarious I am, that I'm a great friend and will give all I have to the people I love, and that I make the people around me happier.  I also know that everything that I am comes from God and my worth is wrapped up in Him.  But when all I ever wanted was to get married and no guy could see past my exterior to all of the inner awesome, you can bet that none of that seemed to matter much after a while.

And sometimes that feeling comes back to haunt me. 

The other day, a friend said she wanted to set me up with someone, and my immediate thought was, "he probably won't like me because I'm too fat."  It popped into my head before I could even think about it for two seconds.  It was automatic.  It felt crappy.  I wanted to hit that thought over the head with a mallet like it was a whack-a-mole.

I forced myself to stop thinking it.  And then I vowed to re-lose the pounds I gained over the summer that are making me feel self-conscious.

I lost 5 this week.

I bought a cute dress at Target for $17, and I love it so much, but I'm not as happy about it as I should be because I know it would be so much cuter if I was twenty pounds lighter.  And I was twenty pounds lighter not too long ago, so it feels like a fresh wound.

I took a picture in the dress though, because I wanted to have a before and after picture in it.

The dress has POCKETS!!!!!

I can't wait for the after picture.

What happens when you blow it?

I haven't written since the 4th of July.  That's over three months.

If I'm not writing, I'm not doing well, period. 

I just don't want to disappoint people.  I want people to be motivated by my success, not sucked down with me when I'm sinking.

And I sank for a while.  Pretty badly.

I thought I was over my compulsive over-eating, but it appears that there may always be triggers.

So, here it is: I am a compulsive over-eater.  And I'm ashamed.  But I am also human, and full of weaknesses, and if I have learned anything at all, it is that some things are impossible without the awesome power of God.  So when I'm doing really well and I have all this self-control and I'm not being tempted by food, I start to feel invincible, like I can just do this on my own, and I forget to rely on God. 

And then stuff starts to fall apart, and before I know it, my sister has a baby and I spend time taking care of her and her kids and definitely don't have time to eat well, which leads to "well, I'm gonna be driving 3 hours, I need to stay awake in the car... Cheetos and M&Ms and soda will do the trick!"  But those are trigger foods and once I start, I buy them often.  And then my friend Jen comes to visit and we eat a bunch of junk food.  And then I start a new job and there is a bottomless pit of candy and bagels and food, food, food, and I have been poor for so long and unable to eat without worrying about where the money will come from to buy my groceries, so I go a little crazy and eat more food than I need.  And then I start school again and my schedule is so busy that I definitely don't have time to go to the gym.  And then I have re-gained 20 pounds.

I just want to crawl into a hole and cry.

I did put the breaks on about a month or so ago, and the gaining stopped.  I even lost a little of what I had gained.  But I am not at the place yet where I have kicked it back into gear fully.  I have better control, but I need that power of God to do this for me.  And I need a less-full schedule so that I have time to go to the gym.

But having two jobs plus trying to launch my photography business, writing for the school newspaper and for a magazine article writing class, plus copy editing the paper is like having two full time jobs, and I barely have time to sleep.  I am so exhausted all the time... something else that takes a toll on my weight.

I told my cousin I gained 20 pounds back and she said I don't look like I gained that much, but I definitely see and feel it.  And I hate it.  I feel like such a failure.  And I no longer feel comfortable in my skin. 

At least I know what to do about it though.  And I'm still in decent shape, despite the lack of workouts.  A few weeks ago, I was covering a football game for the paper when the visiting team had their lockers ransacked and robbed.  You can imagine the riot that started to break out, and my news friends and I covered the story without missing a beat.  There was a point in the night where we were getting a statement from the sheriff, and he got a call saying that there was another fight in the lower lot.  He took off in his car, and we ran after him on foot.  I thought for sure I would be the first to stop, but I never ran out of breath.  My body still wants to be active.  And so do I.

So now it's time for some pictures.  These aren't pictures I'm excited to put up.  But this is the story of my journey, which unfortunately includes setbacks.

In my scrubs at work, feeling uncomfortable with myself.

Definitely a fuller face.

Aww, look how cute!  A baby sheep!  And also rolls of fat reclaiming my midsection.  Ewe

  So now that I've admitted it out loud, or at least in writing, it's time to turn this thing back around and seek that help I know I need that only God can give.  Because this struggle is not what my life is about, and it's getting in the way.

Thanks to my mom and Costco

You know what rules?  Costco.  You know why?  Because my mom and God said so!  Okay, so maybe God didn't say that Costco rules, but that's the phrase I used to win arguments when I was a kid.  My mom would never support anything that God disagreed with, so if she said it, it HAD to be right.  Who can argue with THAT logic? 

I wasn't trying to be manipulative.  I was just stating facts.

This is a fact: my mom loooooooves Costco.  Once, when I was 19 and my friend Jane and I got jobs together doing customer service for AT&T, we were filling out all the paperwork with a bunch of other hirees and the form asked for our parents' address.  Jane leaned over, pointed at that question on mine and whispered, "you should put Costco."

Fast forward two years, and my friend Kelli and I were giving everyone we knew ridiculous nicknames.  She and I combined are Christmas, but with a lisp, so it's actually Krithmith.  We gave out names like Fireplace, Brick, Fence and Birthday.  Take a wild guess at  what we named my mom.

Yep.  My mom was Costco.

You can't really blame the woman... Costco has great deals on everything you could possibly imagine, except diapers.  They sell them, but they're no cheaper there than anywhere else.  I don't even know why I know that, but I do.  Besides, my mom doesn't have any babies, and her grandbabies wear cloth diapers, so that non-savings item doesn't even affect her.  Why am I talking about diapers?  Maybe I should stop writing in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping.  Haha, yeah right.  That'll never happen.

As Nacho Libre would say, anyhwaaaaysss...

My sister had a baby last week, and my parents drove out to be with her and help out for a month or so.  On the way up to San Luis Obispo where my sister lives, they stopped in LA and spent a few days with their other children.  And they brought gifts.

I got an exercise shirt, from Costco of course, and a pair of Jeep brand shoes which may or may not be from Costco.  I'm really not sure. 

When I went up to be with my sister for the birth and recovery time in the hospital, we all went to Costco and my mom bought me some new exercise pants!  They are reversible and have a little hidden pocket in the waistband.  The prices are great, at $13 for the shirt and $17 for the pants.  That is quite a bit lower than the clothes I've been finding when looking for good workout clothes.

Before the new Costco pants, I only had one pair of pants that I liked to work out in.  I have bigger pairs from my fatter days, but I hate wearing those when I'm working out because I honestly just feel like I'm jiggling all over the place, which is a rotten feeling.  I need to wear the size that fits properly, which right now is a large.  Another rotten feeling is being poor and not being able to buy good workout pants because at other places they're $25-$40. 

Today I went to the gym and realized I was wearing all three of the items my mom bought for me.

Thanks for the new workout clothes, mom!  I'll be using them double time because I didn't work out at all the whole week I was taking care of my sister post-c-section and now I'm looking bloated.  Nothing some new gym clothes and time at 24-Hour Fitness can't cure!

The story of a mile

I've never been a runner.  Yes, I have participated in two 5ks this year, and I plan to do plenty more, but don't mistake that as a sign that I'm a runner.  I'm not.

When I was a kid, for P.E. we used to go down to the park at my dad's job with another homeschool family, the Dills.  There was a nice running trail with stops along the way for different areas of exercise.  I enjoyed the exercise stations but when it was time to run I always hated it.  I did, however, have a pretty major crush on Adam, the Dill boy who was my age, and when he took my arm and pulled me around the track, I was happy to acquiesce!  Sure, I'd run if it meant time with Adam!  But without the motivation of a cutie to run with, oh heck no!

When I was at school in Germany, my good friend and roommate Joy used to drag me out of bed when it was still dark and crack the running whip as I complained of my impending death during a very cold and dark torture session.  She was a runner and I adore her, and I needed exercise, so when we discussed running together it seemed like a good idea, but when it came down to it, I admire the determination it took on her part to get me going!  She also got me to do early morning aerobics and many other crazy things I never would have attempted on my own.  If you know me at all, you know just what an accomplishment that is... not only because she made me run, but getting me out of bed in the early morning is no easy task!  But Joy has always been able to motivate me like no other.  She rules.

Obviously lately I have been more into fitness, and I genuinely want to be a runner.  I want to love it.  I plan to do a half marathon someday, and run the entire way.  In my head it sounds glorious.  In reality, I can't run for more than a minute without stopping to walk.  As soon as I start running I think, "Why did this seem appealing?"

That happened this afternoon when I decided to see how far I could jog around the block.  One lap around is slightly more than half a mile, and a few times in the past I have alternated running and walking, but I have never run for more than thirty seconds.  Wimp.  I set out thinking I would run half the block, walk the other half and be done with it. 

I didn't even get that far.  I jogged all of 0.15 miles, to the end of my street, turned the corner and walked the 0.09 miles that makes up one short end of my block.  Then I started to jog again, thinking I'd see if I could make it the full 0.22 miles of the next street before having to turn the corner again, but I really didn't see it happening. 

But then my mindset changed.  Why stop?  I needed to just push myself a little and I knew I could do it.  When I got to the end of that street and turned the corner, I knew I could keep jogging because that street is only the length of three houses.  I would stop there. 

But then I pushed a little further, because there were only five more houses until I got home.  For sure I could make it home!  I had only planned to go around the block once and I would have run more than half of it, which is pretty good! 

Something kept pushing me though, and instead of turning in at my driveway, I kept going.  I made it to the end of my street again and forced myself to finish the last little bit.  Then I walked the rest of the way home. 

I jogged one full lap around my block: 0.57 miles!  I guarantee that is the farthest I have run in one shot since Adam Dill pulled me around the track at Hughes Aircraft when I was 12.  I know it's nothing, but it feels like a huge accomplishment for me!

Ooh, and I also got to wear my workout wristband for the first time!  It has a pocket for ID on one side, and a zipper pocket for keys on the other. I bought it at Victoria's Secret right after I did the Color Run in order to get a Color Run tank top for $5.  We had to buy something in their VSX exercise line, and I didn't want to spend $50 on running pants.

All decked out and sweaty post-run

That says runner.  It may not be true yet, but it will be.

Ooh, I need to put on some mascara.

This is the tank top I got for $5.  I wanted to wear it now and take a picture so I have a comparison shot for later on when I'm an actual runner and weigh less.  Before and after shots are fun!

I feel good right now, with that run out of the way.  I just have one question though: why does running produce so much saliva?  I probably spat 32 times during that run, one for every year of my life!  Hahaha. <--- dork.

You win some, you lose some

I lost the second Diet Bet I signed up for.  I only lost four pounds instead of the nine I needed to lose in order to win.  I was just too busy with final projects and finals to sleep much for a few weeks, and not getting enough sleep REALLY messes with my body.  Also, what with not having enough time to sleep and all, you can bet that I didn't spend a single minute at the gym.

It's okay to not meet your goals sometimes, as long as you're not back-tracking and you stay focused.  Sometimes life legitimately gets in the way, but it's important not to let a short hang-up turn into an extended period of laziness and gluttony.  It's amazing how quickly it can go there.

It's easy, when I see a little spike in numbers on the scale, to get discouraged and go into a mindset of "well I already gained a few pounds, I might as well eat this bag of M&Ms... quart of ice cream... vat of macaroni and cheese... olympic swimming pool full of whipped cream..." or whatever seems tempting at the time.  Okay, most of that was grossly exaggerated.  Except the M&Ms.  I truly cannot stomach an entire quart of ice cream anymore although there was a day... let's not talk about that.

Actually, yes.  Let's talk about that. Because...

I have a very tall friend who is truly amazing and wonderful and I can't wait for her to find an amazing man to marry and be nerdy with.  She, however, is afraid it will never happen because she thinks she's taller than every man ever.  While I understand her desire for a taller man so that she can feel small and protected, it's just kind of a crazy thing to worry about!  Besides the fact that there are obviously plenty of tall men out there, to convince her that height truly doesn't matter, I frequently tell her the story of my also-tall sister, who swore up and down that she would never marry a guy who is shorter than she is.  And then she met her husband.  He is a few inches shorter than she is, and she genuinely doesn't care.  It just doesn't matter!

So we're talking about my sister the other night, and I say, "would you like to see pictures of them?  Would that make you feel better?"  She exuberantly claimed that she would indeed like to see some evidence of a happy oddly-heighted couple, and I went to Facebook to track some down.  I ended up in a photo album from their wedding rehearsal and while showing her proof that height does not hinder happiness, I found a picture of myself that I had blocked from my memory.  It was not tagged because I didn't want anyone to see it at the time, which is ironic, because I am now going to post it here for all to see.

I commented on it and my mom saw the comment and told me that I look downright skinny in this picture compared to some that she has, and she asked if I wanted them.  In the midst of cringing at the thought, I told her to send them.  I wrote a post a while back with pictures of me from before, but since most of my pictures are in storage, and there aren't a whole lot of digital pictures from back then, the pictures in that post don't really show just how huge I used to be.

Not only do I want to be completely transparent and show exactly what I used to look like and what is possible with hard work and self-control, I also think it's important to keep these reminders for just the kind of situation I am facing now: having lost my footing just a little bit while being tied up with end-of-school busy-ness and forcing myself to power through and not give in to the dark side.  One look at these pictures is enough to send me running to the gym.  In fact, that's where I'm going as soon as I finish writing this.

So here is a picture from the day my nephew Eli was born, March 15, 2010, and then a slew of horribly embarrassing pictures from earlier years.

 

There is hardcore cringing going on right now.  But I also know that now I look like this:

In this picture, by the way, I am wearing a newsprint skirt that I bought for the Media Arts Banquet at Pierce College, where I am copy editor of the newspaper the Roundup.  I got it on ebay for $1.99 and it is size Large.  That's all it said.  Large.  Which could have meant anything.  I took a small gamble and it totally paid off, and it's my new favorite skirt!

Anyway...

I regret decisions that I made for years and years that kept me fat and miserable.  I look back and I wonder how I let myself waste so many years.  It makes me sad.  All I ever thought I wanted was to be married with kids, and I totally sabotaged myself because of my state of mind.  My twenties are gone, and I spent a majority of that time lost and depressed.  I was not the person I am today.  And yet, it's amazing what God can do with all the ugly and messy and dirty that I turned my life into.

My story is helping inspire a handful of people to get healthy and that makes the whole experience... maybe not worth it, but it makes it beautiful.  It gives it a purpose when I saw only despair.  And it gives me a purpose I wouldn't have had otherwise.  I want to inspire people.  I want to let people know that if I can do it, literally anyone can.  And I want people to know that they are worth it.  They are valuable and they deserve more than the miserable state in which they are stuck.

Food is a crutch for so many, and it masks the real issues that each person struggles with deep down.  It was when I finally let go and let God heal my inner junk that my outer world started to change as well.   Today, I am joyful, confident, and full of direction for my life, which is amazing.  My exact journey is what I had to go through to get to where I am, and I would not switch places with anyone in the world if i was given that option.