Super DUPER Woman!!

154 this morning!  If you're counting, that's a FIVE POUND weight loss for the week.  I feel like this week is going to make all other weeks seem a little bit lamer.  Because seriously, even if next week is an awesome 2 pound weight loss, well, that's not a FIVE pound weight loss.  So not as cool.

This last week was a big milestone for another reason though.  Everyone has their weight plateaus.  I've found in my life that there are certain weights where my body wants to stick, and it takes a lot of extra work to move past them.  For me, those weights have been 188, 176, 159, 146, and 135.  If I'm in between any of those weights, it means I'm on my way up, or I'm on my way down.  Of course, each of those numbers indicates a range, like 176 actually means 176-180, and 146 means, more accurately 146.5-150 (not coincidentally my weight range from last summer), but those are the numbers I have trouble seeing the underside of.

159-161 represents a particular trap for me, especially since it's the "juuuuust overweight" one.  I graduated high school weighing 160.  After my first semester of college (during which I dropped a quick 15 pounds) I got back up to 160 and stayed there for a year and a half.  Meaning I was about 160 when I started dating my husband.  Last time I was losing weight, I got down to around 160 over the holidays, and spent almost 3 months completely stuck there.  160 is a scary scary place for me.

This week, I pressed my feet firmly against 160, and dove far away from there.  I pushed off into the lower 150's (hey, TECHNICALLY it's true!) and MAN IT FEELS INCREDIBLE!!  I wasn't shocked I had to spend an extra week at 159, and though I was determined to not freak out about it, I was afraid there was a real chance that I could spend an EXTRA week or seven at that weight.

BUT NO!  The 160 curse is over come!  Healthy weight is achieved!  And I weigh the same (give or take a fraction of a pound) as my husband!

Boom shakalaka shakalaka laka boom.

Okay, so I was just looking for a picture to visually represent how I feel right now.  You know, something like this -->

And during the search, I came across this little gem -->

Which is super stinking awesome and probably a sight more accurate and also made me laugh.  So this is the real picture.  Ignore the sexy wonder woman above it.  This is the one.

Sick and tired and sick and tired and sick.

Today we celebrate my brother's birthday at my mom's house.  So I didn't eat the decadent, cheesy, saucy meatloaf my mom had made.  I also didn't eat her cheesy hash brown potatoes.  I didn't eat a single M&M that she had sitting out, a fact that made me proud as I would gladly replace most of my diet with M&Ms and be vastly happier person for having done so.  I didn't eat a single chip, and certainly didn't touch the delicious 7 layer bean dip she'd prepared.

Instead, I ate some salad, some green beans, and 2 1/2 small pillsbury crescent rolls.

Then, after lunch, maybe around 2 or 3 o'clock, I wiped my finger in the leftover bowl of homemade frosting sitting on the counter.  I didn't eat the cake or the ice cream, but I did lick between 1/2 and 1 teaspoon worth of frosting off my finger.

15 minutes later, the cramping started.

Currently it's almost 6 o'clock and I feel like absolute crap.  Is it because I ate the frosting?  Or was there too much butter on the green beans?  Is it because the dressing I ate on the salad was full-fat instead of fat free?  Despite my doctor's insistence that "carbs will be good for your stomach", were the rolls too much?  Or were they the wrong kind of bread??

I really can't say.  I can't answer any of these questions, and that's really my problem.  Every 2-3 days, I still have painful stomach cramps, and am still never quite sure why.  And when you don't know why, you don't know how to stop it from happening again tomorrow.

Although this time, my money is on the stupid frosting.

Hey somebody:  Go ahead and ask me how I've already lost so much weight since my son was born!  Little bit of diet.... little bit a exercise, and huge freaking helping of debilitating pain.  It'll skinny you right up.

ONE FIFTY FREAKING FOUR!!!!

That's right, Baby.  Yeah, I worked out before I got it, and I hadn't had much to eat yet, but I weighed myself 4 times, and each time it agreed.

154.6

154.8

154.6

154.2

But any way you slice it, it all means the same thing:  Today, I weighed less than 155 pounds.  Today, I  AM OFFICIALLY A HEALTHY WEIGHTED HUMAN!!!!

I knew I was on my way there, but honestly figured it'd be another week before I hit it, at least.  Great big freaking shock, hence the obsessive-seeming list of scale-trials.

First, I have to celebrate being not-overweight one more time.  WOOP WOOP WOOP!!!!!  Okay, got that out of my system.  Second, there's a good point to be seen here.  Last week, I took five days off from exercise, and despite my awesome diet-keeping, (I'm sorry, but yeah, I have never IN MY WHOLE FREAKING LIFE EVER eaten as healthy as consistently as I've been doing this past month or so.  So it makes me feel a little bit proud of me.  And strangely grateful for stomachaches.) Right, DESPITE my awesome diet-keeping, I didn't lose a single pound all week.  And of course that feels a little bit discouraging, nobody likes to feel like they're making the effort and seeing no results, but deep breaths, deep prayers, and we press on.

Because the flip side of weeks like THAT, come in the form of weeks like THIS.  Your body plateaus.  Your body finds a weight and does its best to hold on there.  Your body struggles and struggles to become more efficient and not lose more weight.  But you keep to your diet.  You continue to exercise and reassure your body that everything's fine, this is not a panic-starvation time.  Your body is outrageously stubborn.  But you can be more so.

This week, my body blinked first.  And I've dropped 4.5 pounds since Monday.

I know that my body might rally tomorrow, and that I might weigh 156 or something again.  I'm okay with that, because once again, I'm familiar with the process.  I know that I can out stubborn my body this week and this month and this year until I beat it into submission, into the body I want it to be, instead of the amorphous blob that Ben & Jerry's wants it to be.

This is me and Kaden today, and we are super-studs:

Gosh, my chubby little dude is so stinkin cute.  Too bad he's also a super mega drool monster and has to wear bibs 24/7.

Oh, and those cookies I bought for the hubs yesterday?  Well, I've decided to turn them into a milestone too:  For the first time ever, yes EVER, a box of cookies entered this house, and it will be finished without me touching a single crumb.

I really think I may be growing.

I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME, PLEASE!!!!

I got a call from the doctor's office this morning.  They got my labs back, and it would seem that I have a bladder infection, something relatively common in the wake of bringing another human into the world.

Bladder infection.  Which is tres strange, seeing as I have not experienced a single expected symptom of said infection.  I hope, HOPEHOPEHOPE, that this is my only malady, and that this is just some crazy atypical presentation, and that I haven't fatty-fooded my way into an O.R.. Hopehopehope.  But Tuesday is ultrasound day, so more should be known then.

This morning on my way to the pharmacy, I asked husband if he wanted anything from the grocery store next door.  He let me know that he would like "something sweet", and that cookies would be good, and I said that he was a jerk for making me buy delicious cookies that I am not allowed to eat, so he told me to get some cookies that I don't like and I told him that there's no such thing so he chose Chewy Chips Ahoy.  But I think he's a jerk.

Today, I weighed 157, which is a new post-Kaden low, and only 2 pounds overweight, and only 37 more pounds to go till I achieve Maximum Awesomeness.  So yay!!!!  I very much needed that kind of encouragement, as my resolve has begun to waver these past few days.  I can't say as I'm cheating on my diet, since I think that would be very dangerous and may increase the pain I feel ALL THE DANG TIME anyway, (hopehopehope), but my desire and motivation has changed.  I don't waaaaant to do this anymore.

My next weightloss goal is becoming a healthy-weighted person, or weighing less than my husband, whichever comes first.  And I... oh crap.  The baby woke up again and I haven't worked out yet.  Okay, so long folks, I need to see if I can squeeze something in before he becomes vera vera angry with me.

Happy Birthday to Healthy Me!!

I have a tendency to forget important days, even when they're MY important days.  But I stumbled upon one today:  It seems that today is EXACTLY 2 YEARS since I ate my first Slim Fast bar as the  start of my diet!

Days like today are excellent antidotes for days like today.  Okay, let me 'splain.

Today, I weighed in at 159.  That makes this the first week since I started losing weight 2 months ago that I haven't logged a single pound of weight loss.  My diet has been very awesome, very VERY awesome in fact (helped by the gall bladder pain that haunts every meal I risk consuming), but I took 4 days off from exercise because of my back pain.

I don't care what works for other people.  It seems that for me, eating between 1000 and 1500 calories a day is NOT enough for me to lose weight.  I need to work out too.  My body is just way too freaking efficient to lose weight by calorie reduction alone.  All of this makes up the bad version of today.

The good version of today remembers that I weigh over 30 pounds LESS today than I did 2 years ago. Good Version reminds me that, even though I've spent the last year growing a baby, I'm a smaller, healthier me today than I was at age 26.  And 25, and 24, and 23, and probably 22, for that matter.

And that makes me feel like, well, like this.

Check me out yo.  I'm totes hot stuff.

I'm definitely not ready to be done with this journey yet.  The feeling I had two years ago, when I thought I could never be healthy again, could never look or feel like myself again... I won't let myself go there again.  It's outrageously depressing.

So yeah, this week didn't go as planned.  But food doesn't rule my life, and laziness only exists to be overcome.  I'll be healthy weight again soon, and I'll get to my goals eventually.  Cuz quitting is for sucks.  And heck, it's my birthday.

My doctor wants to gut me like a fish.

Don't ask me how I know.  When you know, you know.  I can see it in his eyes.  That man is coming for me. And my gallbladder.

That's right folks.  I went to the doctor.  After having baked chicken, wild rice and broccoli for dinner, and then falling into a terrible, 10 hour swing of stomach cramping, I figured it was about fricks time to go see a doctor.  This was the point that I realized my gallant attempts at "treating my pain through diet"  were failing miserably, and that this pain needed a little something more than just staying away from french fries.

*Quick disclaimer from here on out.  If you have a.... anything... I'm not writing this to judge you.  Please don't hate me, and don't think I'm trying to be mean.  This post is written out of a very specific combination of pain and self deprecation.  That is all.*

Before leaving the house, I slumped down and whined to husband.

"Shaney, I feel fat and ugly and I have to go tell a doctor about my bowels."
"Oh, it's okay.  You don't look... big or bloated to me!"

Would someone please explain to my husband that he, by changing the words around did IN FACT tacitly imply that I am both fat and ugly?  Thank you.

Then I got to meet the world's most overly informative nurse, who responded to my symptoms by letting me know that THIS SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT SHE HAS and upon being asked let me know that what she suffers from is Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is coincidentally the exact moment that I started to consider suicide as a pretty solid treatment option.

But I digress.

The doctor came in, and brought with him a little surprise, by way of a braaaaand new MED STUDENT!  No, let me rephrase.  My 4'11", chubby, aging doctor brought with him a tall, young, decently attractive med student.  No, I'm not trying to pick up young medical professionals, I simply feel a liiiiittle extra uncomfortable when forced to describe my bowel movements in front of attractive people.  I don't know.  It's this weird phobia I have that probably dates back to high school.  It's also why I very strongly believe that getting hit with the ugly stick should be included in one of your first years at med school.

Long I'm-not-gonna-relay-it-here-story short, my doctor says that all signs point to that he wants to cut out my gall bladder.  He suggests that everything will be immediately better and awesome once I no longer have this annoying little organ (even though the internet vehemently disagrees on this point), but has conceded to "go through the motions" of seeing whether or not I actually have a problem with my gall bladder, just to make me feel a little better.

And so, the testing begins.  Just so you know, I watched when they took my blood, because I am a grown up and not a total pansy which means it doesn't freak me out to see needles stab me in the skin and veins and steal my life source.  Right.

It was unpleasant, and the next few months are bound to get unpleasanter.  They put me on the purple pill, but my stomach chooses to hurt anyway, every night it seems.  And of course, my doctor very much wants to remove my insides.

But hey, at least I don't have IBS.  Cuz ew.

This is the grumpiest one on the internets. Ever.

I cannot trust myself today.

My back hurts even worse, putting any weight on my right foot is killing me.  So I skipped my morning run.  I am outrageously exhausted but I cannot nap because I am responsible for two other humans' lives.  Stupid tiny humans, can't take care of their own dang lives.

Oh, and I really can't trust my own life decisions.  And everything is going bad. badly. poorly?  Grammar is a worthless freaking endeavor.  Whatever.  The idea is that all things suck right now.

I keep trying to clean the house, but mostly it's not going well.  I'm too tired for this.

I got an idea for a book and I wrote about half a page and then decided to change my life's goals.

I saw this little toddler skirt on Pinterest (I hate Pinterest) and now I want to make it, but the last craft I worked on still looks like this:

And a whole skirt sounds a lot more complicated and a lot harder to finish.

I hate Pinterest because everything on there is so stupid cute it's pissing me off.  Also, people keep posting pictures of outrageously decadent dessert type things that I will probably never ever be able to eat again in my life and it's pissing me off.  And yesterday, my client's dad left the Food Network on while I worked and every different chef-person made stuff with chocolate and Paula Dean has an annoying accent and she really shouldn't be eating those donuts either diabetesthankyouverymuch and it's all PISSING ME OFF.

Oh, and that thing it my mouth.  It's a plum.  I have been really afraid of the kitchen today, because in this mood, I'm at "Code Red: Will probably eat everything in the kitchen, including the sink" today, and I've been afraid to eat.  So until noon I wouldn't let myself have anything except for coffee because my relationship with the fridge is a lot like other people's relationship with a can of Pringles.  But at noon I decided to risk it and I ate a plum.  Fruit is nice because it comes in pre-packaged single serving units.

My lunch is the pits.

Oh, and last night, when I was telling my daughter goodnight, my husband corrected my grammar, because he really likes getting sneak-attack-punched-in-the-face, it seems.  Because otherwise, why the bloody h-e-l-l would you correct your exhausted and cranky wife's grammar? Huh? HUH??

I guess I'm done for now.  I'll just go and watch some "Hoo-Man" (no idea why that's easier to say than He-Man, but there you have it) with my daughter.

Anyone ever notice how snotty and pretentious that guy sounds?  Geez, count me in for Team Skeletor.