This morning I read through the posts, and thought, hey, I should update this blog about my current status; I’ve left it at a peak of stress.
The family went to Reuben’s wedding this past fall (fall 2016). It was a wonderful experience, and so worth all the stress. (Unlike the family reunion in Florida, which was almost as much stress, and never as enjoyable, in my mind; my sisters were mostly all too busy focused on their own kids/grandkids/families for us to connect. And our kids were all too focused on caring for their young children and babies to interact with extended family.)
Anyway, I was grateful that my kids bootstrapped me, and handled the details (Air Bnb! Uber! Trains!–far beyond the ken of this country mouse.) It was wonderful to share a huge house with my kids in a cool neighborhood, and just move around the city together for 5 days. Fun from start to finish.
I didn’t lose any weight before the wedding, not really. Though I was able to resume regular workouts last spring/summer, and (over time) rebuild some running speed/stamina, I weighed around 180-183 in October, which is just about my median adult weight since 40. I think I might have gained some weight in SF, over that week. Three weeks later, I left for a conference in Florida for 5 days, and stayed with my friend Ari, who is a big foodie and drinker. Though I tried, …. every time we ate, she ordered for us, and it was creamy, sauce-y, buttery, tons of alcohol. When she made a “healthy” breakfast smoothie (which, BTW, was super tasty!), it was loaded with straight coconut fat and peanut-butter. I rolled home from Florida, a full 5-lbs heavier.
I tried to drop that 5 lbs, but we soon were in the holidays, and eventually I gave up. I didn’t bake as much or as often as I do most holiday seasons, but I ended the holidays by eating up all the cookies in the house before I started on a new diet. On December 28, I weighed 195.5 lbs. I was swollen! My ankles were puffy, retaining water. My face was puffy. I really looked ragged.
On December 28 I started on a ketogenic diet. I modeled it on the Atkin’s Diet Phase 1. I eased into it by “allowing” myself to not count calories, eat whenever I was hungry during the first week, but keep carbs below 20 grams a day, until I had adjusted to a severely low-carb diet. The transition to fat burning occurred fairly quickly, and was “over” also pretty quickly. I felt great!
I was able to maintain this diet for January and February. In January I joined a Meltdown Challenge (for 6 weeks), and was successful. In March I started allowing a little more carbs, but kept them around 50-80 gms a day. I was eating around 1500 calories a day; maybe up to 1800 a day. I also drank wine occasionally, within those parameters. In April, I had to basically give up the diet, to a degree, because we had so many family celebrations (6 birthdays! Wedding anniversary! I stayed for a week at Brian & Erin’s after Neve was born, and switched to their vegetarian diet). The good news was that not only did I not backtrack, I still lost a little weight during the month. I did another online Challenge during April-May, and this time, at the end of it, I hit my “first” big goal, set back in December: I weighed 163 at the Challenge weigh-out near the end of May, with a BMI of 24.9 (just within the “normal weight” range).
By the end of that challenge, it was late spring/early summer, and I started to crave….beer on the back porch!! Though I did enjoy a couple of weeks drinking beer (and succumbing to the gourmet chocolate chips cookies catered in our contract negotiation meetings), I decided that I wanted to go deeper on the weight-loss, and I would like to try something new, and perhaps quicker, to get me to 155 and/or the mid-140s. I also am keen on learning what I need to do to maintain this level of health/weight, and I knew I wanted to be able to really dig into the process of losing weight, becoming a “lean” person, and learning how to maintain this intensity of being fit. So I signed up for Optavia, starting last week/first of June…and that is the focus of my Optavia journal, elsewhere on this blog site.
I’m not quite two weeks into the Optavia weight loss. I had bounced up to 166.9 by time I started (what with all that beer drinking, and cookies!!), though I purposely weighed in after a big meal (so it was somewhat high, just in volume of food ingested). This morning I weighed 158.3. Here’s the most surprising (to me) part–I am having fun with the diet. I feel jazzed and great! And, wow, I believe I have crossed some threshold, and now my physical appearance seems to match how I feel inside. I feel–emotionally, psychologically, physically–so different with the fat shield melting away. I feel more open, more vulnerable, more sensitive, more responsive, more “me”, more “real”, more aware.
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The last update I think is important to note is that my son successfully completed his probationary program. After he hit bottom again 1 1/2 years ago, and moved back home to pull things together, and complete a treatment program, he is also in a very different place. I won’t go into details, but he has a social group/life; he has a significant relationship; he has moved into a neat apartment in a vintage building in downtown Kzoo. He is re-launched, and suddenly, my life again is not tethered to his.
This created an immediate release of weight (emotionally) on me. I lost the urgency of getting home at night, and cooking a square meal for 3 men (Mark has much less urgent needs around food and feeding). The evenings are not filled with noise, human bodies filling up our small house, and activity cranking until 10:00 PM or later. I am not having to curtail my workouts/diet/sleep/recreational/house-yard chores around supporting my son and his son’s life. I enjoy having more control over my life. I enjoy having the space, now, to put more focus on myself and my own goals.
Mark began to spend more time inside the house (not hours on end in his smoking lair on the porch) with me; we began to talk more, and enjoy being with each other more. We regularly watch some TV shows together. I think we both feel like we are best friends/stronger in being partners. (It is too bad that he both retreats, and feels pushed out, when our son & grandson are living here). Mark and I are enjoying being a family unit just with ourselves.
So, once again, I can look around and say my children are all okay, and in safe places. For now. Knock on wood. Every time I say this, within months, some child’s life is blown up, knocked out of orbit, and then my life is sucked into that chaos. But maybe, just maybe, they are all continuing to grow stronger and steadier, and more able to marshal their own forces to address the challenge.
It’s nearly summer solstice, and it’s absolutely beautiful out here in rural Van Buren county.
nancymansberger 