I think I am beginning to narrow down my struggles, though I admit, the timing of this process was not the greatest on my part, but also done on purpose to help me overcome the greatest of my obstacles, emotional eating. I have always been one to emotionally eat when a crisis has arose and since I began this process I have faced my first challenge, my family. As a single woman, I live about 110 miles away from my parents in the next county to the north. Sure, that isn't far, but I don't get down to see them every weekend due to my own commitments. On May 19 of this year, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic cancer, which had spread to the liver and has also moved a bit into her lungs. This alone helped me pack on about fifteen to twenty pounds, sending me to a starting point of 240.3, but not my highest weight, which I believe was about 255 sometime in my late thirties.
I am an emotional eater. Yes, I am sure people say this is an excuse, but to be honest, I believe it to be a true affliction. It's a void filler, a comfort choice and sadly it's only one of my many options. I abuse food...not healthy food, but comfort food...anything that tastes good and is readily available, like fast food. It's my choice and my choice alone and I am sure if I found more constructive ways of dealing with my "emotional pain", I wouldn't be emotionally eating, but this is how I learned to incorrectly cope. That said, I am doing what I can to make amends, because, to make matters worse, I am a survivor of a pediatric heart surgery. Born with Tetralogy of Fallot, I should be an advocate of heart health, well okay, I am, but what I should actually be, is an advocate of heart health, who lives a healthy lifestyle...and now this is what I am trying to achieve.
I am not without my dark moments in my life, many of us have them, many of us just emotionally eat. My eating was driven by past pain. Now it is being driven by watching my mom who admits to not being much of a fighter, during the fight of her life. She was the spunky one. The one who prayed for everyone. The one who took care of everyone and now here she is, fighting for her own life and sitting in a chair not saying much to anyone anymore. When I see her, it's like seeing a shell of person I once knew and now being on this diet, I am learning to "Feel the emotion, not feed the emotion". A saying I came up with last week in order to deal with not being able to reach for the nearest comfort food.
I started this program at this time on purpose, because I wanted to, pardon the expression, "kill two birds with one stone". I need to lose weight and I need to finally learn how to face pain and not just shove it deep inside. I don't know how chemo is going to turn out for my mom, but I do know that I have to trust that no matter what happens, that my dad has been the best caregiver any spouse could ever ask for and that I have done what I could as their only child to give him the breaks he needs when I visit, as well as be a good daughter to my mom for whatever time she has left on this earth, whether it be months or years. I want her to stay with us, I want her to live for years. Heck, I keep praying, wishing and putting out to the universe for that miracle and that she will be better, but the one thing I am learning from this program is that the only thing I can control is me, not the world and everyone in it.
I can only control what I do and the choices I make and being in this program is one of the choices I have made. I need to get healthy and I need to be in a place so my heart has a chance and I have a chance. It's a possibility that type 2 diabetes lead to my mom's condition, though not proven, but since I am also on the brink of that, I need to make sure that I detour my path and get back on the highway to healthy. This is how I start.
This has been a hard week. I have craved again, I have wanted to eat and once again I succeeded at not succumbing to my desires for "real" food. Two months and 5 days until we transition back onto real food. On the bright side, Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party will be that Friday and despite being an Annual Passholder, I am going with friends and will be able to test my ability to make good choices. Then two weeks following, I will be able off to the Magic Castle for a wonderful night with a few of the same friends for a night of fun and actual eating and choosing well again and I believe I will be able to do it this time and maintain my weight.
So these are my thoughts for today. These are my words for another blog.
Until the next time. I can still say, I got this...
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