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Coming Around Again

Okay, accountability time again ....... As a lot of you know, in what feels like a lifetime ago, I lost a whole kindergarten class’s weight and did it fairly quickly (3 years). It was a struggle to maintain but I managed to “only” gain back about 40 of that original 230 I lost. Then foot surgery happened and I was just learning to walk pain-free (forget 5Ks). I put on a few more but still not a lot. When mama died, the bottom dropped out and I’ve been free-falling since. And the Quarantine 14 was part of that too. So it’s past time to get back on track. This time while it’s not just the physical side of things, it’s the mental side of it too. I’ll be honest: my anxiety has gotten worse since Richard died. There have been nights I have been too scared to sleep lying down because my head pipes up, “you know, what if you die lying down?” I’ve been pretty dang determined that if it’s in my power, my daddy will not have to bury both his kids from their own stupidity. So yeah. There ya go. M...
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Square One, All Over Again

Note: cross-posted from  Meanderings and Musings , cross-posting to Bad Catholic Anonymous   and  Birdcage Wisdom Take the high road or take the low No one but you and God will ever know And you play rough and win or lose Either way, you'll get the blues -- Lucinda Williams, "Ugly Truth" I found myself staring again at something I didn't want to see: ugly truth. The scale didn't lie, and neither did two-plus years worth of knowing I was eating to get away from what was eating me. But two anxiety attacks that awoke me in the middle of the night, scared to death of some physical ailment, the absolute fear not of dying but of leaving people behind and things unfinished -- and knowing I could damn well do something about it........ And facing my worst truth: I'm trying to fill a hole that can never be filled. I haven't written much in a while -- or spread it out over other outlets -- because I was compartmentalizing things. General stuff here, weig...

Kummerspeck

If you're not familiar with the phrase, it is a singular German word that is their word for the weight gain caused by emotional eating. Quite literally, it translates to "grief bacon." Now, as much as I love bacon, I'm sick of eating grief bacon -- and my grief. Since my last post 18-ish months ago (oopsie), so much has happened. I had foot surgery in February 2015, and it derailed me for far longer than I planned.... There was more post-surgical swelling in my foot that made it impossible to wear shoes for nearly four months. I am now at the point that standing for a long time doesn't hurt much. I might pay for it the next day but.... I am still wearing kinesiology tape every day on my foot to help control swelling. I have had to accept that I may not ever hit 100% again. My running dream that I held for so many years may remain unfulfilled -- and I am at last okay with that. If I can ever walk a 5K again that will be enough. At the same time, my mother's mob...

So far, so good....

So here I am, 11 days into January, and feeling a bit better....... Christmas Eve was an eye-opening experience, and so was New Year's Eve. I stepped up on the scale to see the damage from the holidays -- and it was staring back at me in massive boldface, 72-point type, yelling, "NOW. You have to do something NOW." My weight was definitely up, but BOY I didn't think it would be that high..... the highest it had been in almost 3 years, which was right around the same time all my health issues came roaring up. Even though it wasn't an official weigh-in, I looked at where I was on 12/31/13 and where I was on 12/31/14 -- a 25-pound gain. YOWZA. Twenty-five pounds? That was it. I was done. Done, done, done. Tired of feeling tired. Tired of feeling lousy. Tired of feeling sorry for myself for whatever reason. Ready to get moving again in the other direction. Ready to feel like myself again. Sure, I'm going to have to deal with the medical things, but so be it. ...

Getting Back In The Game

Tonight I had a rather sobering experience....... I tried on clothes. Well, I've been doing that a lot lately anyway, but tonight's was unpleasant. I'm getting ready for our musical prelude and midnight Mass and nothing I wanted to wear seems to fit. Not even with a shaper. Not even with squeezing, pinching, moving, flattening, shifting, NOTHING. And it's all on me. Sure, this year I've had multiple doses of steroids. Sure, I've been in and out of doctor's offices. Sure, I've been waylaid lately (especially) by an injury that I'm having difficulty overcoming. But I've allowed the injury, my work schedule, everything else imaginable to be a reason to just be off my game. And I mean WAY off. Tonight was a reminder that I'm not doing my best. This isn't about feeling like a failure or reminding myself of my past success. This is about how I feel, physically, emotionally, mentally, and every other way possible. I am tired -- just plain ...

The Scream You Can't Hear

Right now, there's an inner me that's screaming in frustration. The me that has done more 5K's than I can count. The me that loves going to the gym and working on the physical side of self-improvement -- a stronger, healthier body. The me that steps on the scale in frustration the last few weeks because even with trying to watch what I eat, I feel like tossing it all up and saying, "Why bother?" Yeah, honesty. Yesterday, the gym bag was packed, in the car, and everything was good..... until around 4:00 PM. I truly could feel my left foot swell. Why? I don't know. I don't know anything about my body lately as I battle this foot/ankle thing. All I know is that I can be at the gym, do things right, and feel fine the next day too .... and the day after that, pain, pain, pain. I have sat and wondered "what if" about a million things and if I think anymore about it, I will send myself into a frenzy. And no, I'm not going to do that. This morn...

Some Things You Can't Outrun....

It was early November 1989, and my knees were absolutely killing me. It had been about 3 weeks since they really started hurting after that Mass I went to with my friends, and they hadn't stopped hurting. Really? Could a simple few minutes of kneeling on a makeshift kneeler (basically, a 2x6 covered with a basic loop carpet) cause this much pain? I would soon have my answer, thanks to the outpatient clinic of the Medical University of South Carolina and the Orthopedics Department. I was just about 2 weeks past my 20th birthday when Dr. Morwessel gave me the diagnosis: osteoarthritis. She gave me a laundry list of everything that would happen to me at various ages and stages -- by the time I was 40, 50, 60, etc. -- if I didn't take care of myself properly. And by properly, she meant get the weight off ASAP. It took 16 years for her message to really take root -- because honestly (a) I wasn't ready to hear it but (b) I wasn't hurting nearly as bad as I had been at fir...