Doubt

My daughter just turned 7.  She has been frustrating me by freaking out every time she is told she has done something wrong. I don't want her to become the type of person who thinks she is always right and everyone else is always wrong. So I've been trying to teach her to be more teachable. 

These talks have made me realize how much I tend to need to always be right. This need leads to a big fear of being wrong. Putting this blog "out there" triggered this fear for me big time. I'm not a person trainer or a nutritionist, so my advice isn't founded on anything other than my personal experience. The fear of saying something wrong paralyzed me from publishing more posts.  

Even worse, I started doubting my own exercise and diet plans. What if I'm overtraining and I'm going to get shin splints? What if I'm wasting time doing inefficient exercises? What if I'm eating tons of pesticides by not buying organic produce every time? What if I'm getting too much mercury from the fish? What if I'm destroying the environment by using disposable water bottles all the time? (I really do keep buying reusable ones, but they get ruined when I forget to wash them).  Losing confidence in my plan made it a lot harder to stick to. So I spent a month cheating every few days and didn't lose any weight. There were other causes for my lack of progress, like getting sick and having sick kids and stuff like that. 

So for the month of April, I decided to be completely confident in my diet plan and stick to it 100%, because even if it isn't perfect, it was working. I also revamped my exercise plans and goals. With that, the weight started melting off again, and I've made huge strides in my fitness level. 

Point of the story is that I remembered that pride and insecurity are the same thing. When you're trying to change your life, first gather as much information as you can but don't be afraid of not knowing everything. Next make a decision/plan and move forward with confidence, and stick to it. Then be willing, even eager, to accept correction, feedback, and new ideas. 

After the challenge

When the 24 day challenge was over, I was actually afraid of going back to my old way of eating. I wanted to keep eating the way I had learned to, and I think that's the point. I scoured the Advocare website for advice, and they recommended the 80/20 rule. Then I had to Google what that meant. The idea is that you eat healthy 80% of the time, and give yourself a break or indulgence 20% of the time. This way you don't feel deprived and desperate for sweets all the time, but most of the time you are eating right. So if you eat 3 meals a day, that's 21 meals per week, so 4 of those meals can be whatever you want and the rest are healthy.

With that in mind, my first 4 meals of the week were indulgences, and the next day I decided that a new week was starting...haha, that's not really what happened, but it was kind of like that. I'm just not organized enough to keep track of it that way. Plus, I'm like a shark smelling blood when I eat sweets! I can refrain just fine if I haven't indulged in a while, but one taste wakes the beast inside and I must eat all of the sugar on the planet. For me, that's what food addiction is all about. There is this feeling of zero self control that eats away at me. If it's an option, I will eat it all!

So, I did my best to stick to the challenge rules, and it went ok for 2 or 3 weeks. Halloween happened, and let's just say there was a shark attack. I tried to recover and keep eating healthy, but I started feeling so burned out, and by December I had given up completely. 

I realized that Spark had been giving me energy and will power, but my body was used to it so it no longer had the full effect. I tried to only drink it on days I felt like I needed an extra kick of energy. It was working so poorly by Christmas time, that I didn't even bother. By December 31 I had gained back half of what I lost on the challenge, putting me back to 265lbs. I spent that night brainstorming a new plan. 

Starting over

When a person has one kid, they are overwhelmed with the amount of work to take care of the child and cook and clean and go to appointments and everything. When that person has a second child, they are used to the amount of work required for one, and adding the second is even more hard work. Hopefully by the time they have a third child, they are used to taking care of the first 2, so the third is just as hard, but not 3 times as hard. Does that make sense? Your capacity to take care of things increases gradually as you are required to do more.

When you have 3 kids, and get taken care of 100% for a month, you forgot everything that needs to be done. After I had recovered from surgery and was on my own again, I was floored by how quickly my house became dirty. And it just kept getting worse. And the kids always wanted to be fed. I had to go grocery shopping, and I didn't know what to buy. 

My point is, it was a rough month. I was getting depressed, and I eat bad food when I'm depressed. And that made me more depressed. Everything felt so out of control. I was consistently going to Bootcamp and pushing myself to exercise hard, but I felt like the exercise made me even more hungry.  I gained 10 more pounds, putting me at 270 lbs. 

I asked my trainer for help, and she recommended the Advocare 24 day challenge. I didn't think I could do it because I'm still breastfeeding, but there is a modified version that is approved for breastfeeding mothers. So I'm starting September 26 (right after I get home from our family vacation to Disneyland). 

Roadblock

After about of month of doing Bootcamp, I woke up one morning with what felt like digestive distress. I've never had food poisoning, so I thought that might be the cause. When it hadn't gone away by that night, I went to the ER. They said my gall bladder was inflamed. Gall bladder attacks normally last 1-5 hours, and I was going on 17 hours. They gave me the option to go home and see if it went away or to check in and get it taken out in the morning. I couldn't imagine having surgery with a 2 month old baby at home! My husband is great and supportive and does his best, but all 3 kids for who-knows-how-long while I recover? It wasn't going to happen. So I went home.

The pain didn't go away. The next morning I texted my Bootcamp instructor that I wouldn't be there because I was sick. She told me "don't say you're sick, say you're fighting it". Probably good advice if you have a cold... That night I was calling people desperately making arrangements so I could have surgery.  Luckily, my amazing sister-in-law agreed to come stay with us for a week. So I went back to the ER, and the doctor looked at the chart from the night before and was surprised I went home. To him my gall bladder was clearly infected and needed to come out. 

The surgery went well, and I felt totally fine after a couple of days. After abdominal surgery, however, you have to be careful not to get a hernia. So I wasn't allowed to go back to working out for 4 weeks. Then my scar got infected and I had to take it easy for 2 additional weeks. During that time, my parents came to town and took care of EVERYTHING, and also fed me well...so I gained about 10 pounds.