KThealthyliving

I’m happy to say that I don’t seem to have not screwed myself with the time with family in town.  In the past two weeks since they left, I have lost about three pounds.  Ironically, I think that them coming in helped break me from my plateau.  I definitely didn’t keep on track while they were here but I think that the change in my eating (a slight increase in calories) may have helped me break through.  I didn’t do enough while they were here to do the damage I thought I would as I was exactly at the same weight as I was before they came.  Since they have been gone, I’ve gotten back on track and watched the scale move past where I wasn’t getting it to go before.  I am at 169.8, finally below 170!!

The last of our string of family left yesterday, leaving behind three weeks of bad choices on my part.  I struggled balancing the new remote hours for work, getting ready for my Masters class, eating right (and the planning that goes with it), exercising, and spending time with family.

I skipped last week’s measurements so we shall see on Saturday what damage was done during these three weeks.  I know that I don’t feel good; I feel sluggish and “heavy” (laden down with grease and un-nutritious foods).  There will be no waiting for tomorrows to come so we started today out by forcing ourselves to get up early, eat a good breakfast, and go for a long walk.  I’ve pulled up my online food journal and have entered my food for this morning.  We’ve mapped out when we are getting in cardio and strength training for the week and are ready to go.

It is a long term journey so I’ll take whatever set backs come because of my choices and will simply move forward changing things back and returning to those good habits.

My husband and I had been discussing starting to try for a family for about six months but the big issue was whether I could handle staying in Cayman and working at the college.  You might think that those two issues are completely different but in our world they are not.

You see I am bipolar and am currently on medication.  While I struggle with my mental stability when I am on the medication, it is very bad when I am off the medication (as I learned when I threw a hissy fit and pulled myself off the medication only to end up suicidal and cutting myself).  There are lots of discussions surrounding anti-depressants and bipolar medications such as Lithium and pregnancy (Being bipolar I am on both Lithium and Wellbutrin).  There is a risk to the baby, especially in the first trimester, when on Lithium (I haven’t spent much time researching Wellbutrin) but being off the medication causes risk to the mother (and consequently the baby).  After my personal research and a discussion with my psychiatrist, we agreed that I should be weaned off my medicine before trying to get pregnant and then I would need to be carefully monitored for my mental state (along with all the regular monitoring) throughout the pregnancy.

Scott and I then had to make a decision about when.  If we decided that I had to get out of that job (which means us leaving Cayman), then we would have to get back to the States, get stable in a job, and find a therapist, shrink, and gyno that I am comfortable with and that have worked with bipolar patients through pregnancy.  That would mean that we wouldn’t be able to “start trying”, as regular couples define it (you know, the fun part……unprotected sex), for about another year and a half.  If we stayed here (me in the job that I hate), we could start within the next six months or so. 

This weekend we finally made the decision that we would start trying (in our sense of the phrase).  The state of the economy really helped us make our decision.  We can’t find work to go back to the States.  Although my first week back to work was rocky (hence the reason I wasn’t on here), I know what I have to do to get more mentally stable there and I refuse to allow that job to take a family away from us.  My husband definitely has been feeling the baby bug as he is almost forty.

Our “start trying” means talking to my shrink, gyno, and therapist (who have all worked together on another bipolar pregnant patient).  I need to reach a bit more stable position while on the meds before we can start pulling me off the meds.  It is about a three month process of getting the medicine out of my system and then, after monitoring my Lithium level, we can start the unprotected sex part.  I’m excited!!  If I can get a handle on my work anxiety quickly, we could be less than five months away from starting to do the regular trying.

This impacts my weight loss goals because it puts a bit more of a time crunch.  I want to be in the best shape possible to help us conceive.  I have other physical, female issues which may cause problems with getting pregnant and I don’t want to have weight on top of that.  It also means that while I am trying to lose this weight, I will also be dealing with an unbalanced chemical brain because the medication will be pulled out.  So extra stress, extra instability but I have that baby as my motivation!!  I would love your support through this journey.  If there are any other bipolar women who have been here, please let me know.

I was so happy this morning when I fit into a size 10 pink dress that I wore on my first date with Scott.  It fit beautifully but then I had a birthday party to go to after church that was held at a high-end hotel’s brunch and the fit of the dress wasn’t so great.  It was an expensive place to go (although someone ended up covering the whole bill later) and we thought we were paying so there was that side bugging me as I went to the buffet.  I had also expected it to be a mingling kind of thing instead of a sit down at the table thing.  With it being a sit down thing where all of us were at one table, there was more pressure to eat the whole time that everyone else was eating.

I really feel like I made relatively GREAT choices.  I didn’t have any of the freeflowing champagne and only drank water.  I scouted the whole buffet identifying what was healthy.  I had a few slices of pineapple, a small scoop of scrambled eggs, 4 thin water crackers with two tablespoons of hummus, and three potstickers (unfortunately fried) with chili sauce.  I ate it as slowly as I could because I was worried about sitting around not eating anything at the table.  Most of the people at the table had two plates so that was a chore in itself.  When everyone started to do the seconds thing, I got dragged in so I grabbed one of the small plates and picked up steamed potstickers (they had them the second time) and a 1 inch by 2 inches piece of chocolate cake and a sliver of key lime pie.  I would have completely avoided the desserts if I had realized that there was going to be birthday cake.

I think that my biggest mistake was the birthday cake.  I was sitting right in front of the birthday boy so I didn’t hold strong about not eating anything, although I was able to convince someone to split with me.  Even though I feel like I made relatively good choices, I was STUFFED when we left.  My dress that had looked so cute was tight and I felt gross.

I don’t have many friends and I don’t do things like this very often as I have social anxiety with big groups.  This time there was no anxiety about the people but lots of anxiety about what to eat (which I think is a great thing!).  It is hard to deal with the social eating.  Almost like social drinking or social smoking, you feel like you have to eat when others are eating.  I wasn’t prepared for that in this setting since it was different than a regular restaurant which I already have a plan for.  Hopefully I will get more practice with this kind of thing because it was good to be out with a group of people but I do need to get a plan so that I don’t overeat like I did today.

After a conversation with my boss this weekend, I was able to get permission to work partially remotely.  The Registrar, my job, isn’t really needed at the college because most of what I do is with the records and is on the computer.  I do most of my stuff with the students through e-mail but it is still important for me to be there physically, to be a body to relieve the other staff and to show my face to the students.  Therefore I’ll work two nights a week and do the rest of the work from home.  I think this is a wonderful opportunity for me to avoid some of the distress that work always causes and the eating disasters that exist there.

I am worried about having the discipline to actually work (of course I didn’t tell my boss that…..).  Do any of you who work from home have any advice for me?

First of all, thanks for the comments/encouragement about the sun burn.  I am doing much better and now am incredibly tan! ;)  It still stings if something rubs against it the wrong way or I scratch it.

So this week was the official end to my six week medical leave from work.  Now I have to go back.  For me my work is not a healthy place (hence the medical leave) for me mentally, emotionally, and physically.  It sucks the life out of you.  (It is a small college being run by only 4 full time staff.)  I blame it for “ruining” my life (in drama queen terms) over the past 2 years.  I blame it for my weight gain since I have been here.  In short, I blame my work for a lot of things.

Because I am in a foreign country on a work permit which means I can’t just go searching for another job and because it is too expensive for us to survive on just Scott’s salary, I really don’t have a choice but to work there.  We have discussed going back to the States but it doesn’t look good there as many of you have had personal experiences with.  The work front is really treacherous right now and I should be happy that I have a secure, stable job.

I need to be thankful for what I do have and acknowledge that I have control.  I can make choices.  It isn’t the school’s fault it is my choices.  I made choices about how I was going to cope with the stress and overload of the college that made me gain weight such as eating terribly and not exercising.  I have to start making new choices.

Yesterday was my first test.  I had to go to a staff meeting (one that would have put me in tears in my closed office because I was so frustrated) and go to dinner with all the staff.  It took a lot of mental energy to try to keep the negative, damaging thoughts out of my head but I managed.  I also managed to avoid all of the eating pit falls that I didn’t realize were so automatic there.  I think the four of us that work there (including my husband) handle stress with eating.  We go for what is convenient which means Wendy’s, our favorite fried sweet & spicy chicken at the local Chinese place, or fried Jamaican patties.  Since we are all stressed ALL THE TIME, we ate that all the time.  Happily I resisted and grabbed an orange after the meeting instead of eating the patties that everyone else was eating.  I also did well at the dinner putting away half of the veggie fajitas before even starting.

I think I can beat my old habits with eating and I will just have to keep working to make sure my emotions stay calm so that I don’t have that stress to bring me down.

I do have to say that the thought of you guys, holding me accountable and being an example of something I have beyond work, really helped me through.  I appreciate all the support that I have received.  Thanks guys for giving me something else in my life!!

I got the red 10 lb weight loss star this week!!  Yay!!

Sorry…found it and just had to share.

I made a bad choice yesterday.  You see I am on medication that makes my skin very susceptible to getting burned.  According to my doctor I am supposed to avoid being in the sun completely and when I am in the sun, I am to be completely covered and in the shade.  I have to workout outside so I’ve been in the sun for the past two months every day and I haven’t had any problems so I got a little over confident.

On our bike ride yesterday, we rode past this cove that has been really rocky since before the start of Hurricane season (August of last year) so we haven’t been swimming there as we don’t like how it reduces the visibility for snorkeling.  Yesterday though the water was so calm and smooth and it was a beautiful day!!  My husband had a business lunch to go to so I dismissed the idea of going for some snorkeling and lap swimming since I tend to want to do everything with him.  About thirty minutes before his lunch meeting, I decided “Screw it!” and got myself ready so that he could drop me off.  I wasn’t as careful about the sunscreen as I should have been.  For someone who can get burned in the shade, with clothes on, and sunscreen, it is very important that I do my best to cover myself or else it can be really bad.  And it is!!!

I forgot a swim shirt in my rush and so went out and did about forty five minutes of snorkeling and fifteen minutes of laps (I’m not in swimming shape anymore :(  ) all with my back and legs pointing right up, glittering for the sun to sizzle away at them.  I had so much fun and enjoyed myself a lot.  After I got out of the water, I laid on the beach (I guess I was so consumed by how awesome it was that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to “sun bathe”) and worked on drying off.  My husband’s lunch went forty-five minutes late so I was out there (mind you in the shade and fully dressed) for that extra forty-five minutes.

It didn’t really hit me until 7:00 last night when I started to feel very tired and my skin was tight.  Upon inspection, I was bright as one of the lobsters I’d seen while out in the water all along my back.  As anyone who has ever had a bad sunburn knows, it sucks the life out of you.  I was in bed by 8:00 and was radiating heat when Scott got home after work.

This morning I hurt and, Dr.’s orders, I have to stay out of the sun at least today and, depending on how it looks, possibly tomorrow.  It sucks because all my cardio is done outside, not that I would be able to do any right now anyways.  My skin feels like chicken skin, you know the kind you can remember from when you ate fried chicken with skin.  When I move, I feel like it is being pulled as tight as it can and if I move just a little bit more, it is going to rip and all the lower layers of skin and muscle/fat will come spilling out.  I haven’t tried doing a crunch or push-up yet for my challenges but I am not very hopeful about being able to do it.

Oh well.  I did have a lot of fun and I should have been more careful about protecting myself….  Hopefully it will have gone down enough that I’ll be back up and running (literally) tomorrow!!

My husband suckered me into teaching “Philosophy of Education” at the small college where we work.  The chapter for this class was on ethics.  One of the points that was being covered by looking at different philosopher’s viewpoints was whether morality could be taught and therefore how do you teach it and how can teachers apply that in the classroom.

Aristotle’s point of view on the matter stood out to me for how relevant it is to the weight loss journey.  Both “learning” morality and losing weight sometimes don’t “feel”(as in what that two year old in us wants) to be the best choice for us.  Aristotle had three points.  I’ll merely mention how I saw each point applying to the weight loss journey instead of boring you with the educational ethical philosophy behind it.

1. Avoid the extremes.  We must walk a middle line.  If you throw yourself into exercise too quickly or try to make too many changes to your diet at once, you may find that you end up right back where you started.  You also can’t be apathetic or else you won’t get what you want either.  I have a tendency to throw myself into something and then get discouraged if I don’t see the results quickly or I get burned out.  With either one, I then have a tendency to quit.  We need to be steady and look for balance.

2. Notice what errors we are most likely to do.  If you know that getting up early to fit in a work out is going to be hard for you, then you need to come up with some way of handling it.  Maybe it means doing your workout at a different time; maybe it means putting the alarm all the way across the room so that you can’t just roll over and turn it off.  If you aren’t aware of what will cause you problems, you won’t be able to combat it from the start.  Cookies are my “error”.  There are a lot of sweets that I can tell myself “only one” and I will really eat only one but not with cookies: nope, nope, nope.  Because of that no cookies are allowed in the house.  That’s just a rule.

3. Guard against what is pleasant about bad habits.  Even if it isn’t something that starts off as one of our “errors”, we have to be careful to watch for “what is pleasant”.  You know what I am talking about.  You may not be all that fond of hamburgers but if you find yourself in McDonalds, that hamburger smells, looks, and tastes sooooo good.  It is pleasant to get that little bit of extra sleep instead of getting up to workout.  It is pleasant to be able to eat that donut in the break room.  It is much easier to remember what is not so pleasant about the bad habits like the weight gain but you also have to guard against what is pleasant.

Aristotle does have hope because he says that we will gain understanding over time” (of course referring to morality but we can apply it here).

Take heed what Aristotle has to say.  Heck, his ideas have been around for a while…..