Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 6

Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 6

by | Mar 29, 2017 | Trust Your Gut

 

Trust Your Gut is a series of stories about real people with weight issues, and complications arising from those issues.  It will explain what the person is facing, what their options are, what they have decided to do to take action, and why they chose the path they are on.  Each person’s story will be based on truth, so it won’t all be happy, but it will be real.  The goal of this series is to get people talking about options that are available for people who have weight issues, on either end of the scale.  If you would like to contribute to this series, there is a contact form linked on my Homepage for this blog.  I know there are people out there that want to help people like them; as I do.

 

The names here may or may not reflect the person’s real name.  If someone wants to remain unknown, we will choose a different name for that person’s story.  The goal is to help people, and anonymity is a valid personal choice for contributors.  I will use a person’s name only if they give permission to do so.

This week I am pleased to share another of my own stories.

Here is  Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 6

When I first found out that I was a type 2 diabetic, I had experienced being at “goal weight” about 7 years before the diagnosis.  I successfully lost enough weight on the Weight Watchers program when I did it with my mom back in high school.  After that, I got sick and put on more weight than I had ever dealt with, and since then, I peaked at almost 320lbs.

I am hovering at the edge of “twoville” again, and really hoping that this is the year for me to find my way back to “onederland”.  Twoville is in the 200 lb range, and it starts at 299.99lbs.  Onederland is in the 100 lb range and starts at 199.99 lbs.  That would be an amazing accomplishment.  I can only imagine how that will feel, as it has been longer than a decade since I have weighed in at under 200 lbs.  I think it is a reasonable goal, for one year, and if I make it, fantastic, if not, I will keep fighting the good fight.  Because I believe I am worthy of living a healthier lifestyle, and I can do it if I just put in the effort.  A goal needs to be realistic, and if I put too much pressure on myself, I will fail and be crushed under the weight of that failure.

So I keep going to Zumba, twice a week.  I am preparing to start walking in my neighbourhood in the evenings.  That is also preparing for adopting a dog.  Part of the reason that I want to bring a dog home to live with me is that I know I will HAVE to go for walks more than once a day, EVERY day.  The dog will benefit from living in a loving home, and my health will have to benefit from all the walking.  It is a good plan, and I will have until next winter to prepare myself for walking in the snow and ice.  By then I will be in the habit of the daily walks, and I will be ready to tackle the bad weather walking as a healthier version of myself.

I am so looking forward to having a dog in my life again.  I have friends with dogs, and friends with cats.  I visit them when I can, but it’s not the same as having my own pet here all the time.  My house has been very quiet this winter, with no pitter patter of furry friends to come home to.  I needed time to mourn for my cats, and decided it was time to get a dog, in the spring.  We will be getting ready for that in the next couple of months, and when the right dog crosses our path, we will give it a furever home.

When I first found out I was pre-diabetic (there is no such thing, it is a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes; the doctors just break it to you gently by saying not yet, but really you are a type 2 diabetic).  I was told that I would have a chance of not needing medication for it if I removed sugar from my diet, and ate according to Canada’s Food Guide.  I tried.  I failed.  I was so tired all of the time.  I was drinking up to 2 litres of cola a day for the caffeine because I was so tired all the time.  The sugar was making me tired, so the caffeine was not keeping me awake.  I began drinking more cola for more caffeine, and it never worked for very long.  I know now what I was doing wrong.  Then I switched to diet pop.  Aspartame is something I have removed from my life since then.  I now choose stevia and erythritol for my sweeteners and drink very little pop.  I have one can a day, and not every single day.  I choose pop sweetened with stevia, and it took a bit to learn to like it.

I now drink my coffee black.  It is healthier this way, and now that I am used to it, I like it like this.  Less fuss to prepare it in the morning, and no worries about not wanting to drink it because there is nothing in it.  I sometimes drink green tea.  I sometimes drink oolong tea in one of my THM drinks.  I do not use cola as my main source of caffeine anymore.

I did not tell everyone about being a diabetic for a long time.  I feared the food police.  I learned this term from a diabetes educator.   They are those people who immediately point out what is wrong with everything you eat.  You are the person with diabetes, and everyone else thinks they are the expert.  It is embarrassing to be an adult and have someone tell you that you shouldn’t eat that because you are a diabetic.  Out loud.  In front of a room full of people.  Or to say that isn’t good for you, because it has sugar in it.  People don’t mean any harm, I know it is being said because, on some level, they care about me as a person, and want me to be healthy.  However,  I am an adult, and this type of criticism is not positive, and can have very negative effects on my self-esteem.

I am a lot tougher than I look.  Even if you find me bawling in a quiet place, it is not always because I am sad, it might be because I am SO ANGRY that I sprung a leak.  It is a self-defense mechanism that I have had for most of my life, and I hate it.  It is the quiet, private way to vent.

Other times I would eat my feelings.  I would go buy junk food and regular cola and binge eat.  How dare someone point at what I am eating when they are eating something just as unhealthy, or worse than what I am eating.  They eat whatever they want, well so will I.  The problem with that, other than me gaining weight, is that really I am only hurting myself.  That other person doesn’t even know that they did something wrong.  THEY THINK THEY ARE HELPING ME.  They mean well, but if I am having a sugar low, I might actually NEED that candy I am crunching as fast as I can because my sugars are dropping.  It can happen quite suddenly, and I now have juice boxes and suckers with me all of the time.  I don’t use them unless I need them.

Maybe I have made plans to take extra insulin because I wanted a treat.  I want to be normal, and eat like other people do.  I am not, and that is why I am trying SO HARD to change. I have learned that if I give in a little when I have a craving, I won’t be as likely to binge eat as I would if I suppress it.  So I do have things that are not on the diabetic diet.   I am human.  It is more convenient to grab something quick sometimes.  I am working on that, just like I am working on me.  Most of the time I make healthy choices.  So when you see me eating something that isn’t one of those choices, let me be.  I know the consequences of my actions, and I will recover to my sensibilities when I am ready.

Just like no person is the same as any other person, no person with diabetes is the same as every other person with diabetes, and no person has the exact same issues with weight that every other person has.  That is why it is important for me to write about how I feel, and to share the stories of other people and their issues with weight.  We all are experiencing life as a journey, but we still forge our own paths as individuals.

#TrustYourGut

Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 6

Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 5

by | Mar 16, 2017 | Trust Your Gut

 

Trust Your Gut is a series of stories about real people with weight issues, and complications arising from those issues.  It will explain what the person is facing, what their options are, what they have decided to do to take action, and why they chose the path they are on.  Each person’s story will be based on truth, so it won’t all be happy, but it will be real.  The goal of this series is to get people talking about options that are available for people who have weight issues, on either end of the scale.  If you would like to contribute to this series, there is a contact form linked on my Homepage for this blog.  I know there are people out there that want to help people like them; as I do.

The names here may or may not reflect the person’s real name.  If someone wants to remain unknown, we will choose a different name for that person’s story.  The goal is to help people, and anonymity is a valid personal choice for contributors.  I will use a person’s name only if they give permission to do so.

Here is the next addition to my own story, Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 5

Emotional Eating Epiphany

Today’s Trust Your Gut story is brought to you by alliteration, and the 5th letter of the alphabet, the letter “E”.  It is the fifth entry in my own story.

You don’t generally get to be hovering between 299 lbs and 301 lbs by eating healthy, drinking lots of water, and exercising regularly.  It doesn’t work that way.

I love food.  Not only am I addicted to sugar, but I centre a lot of my thoughts, moods and feelings around food.  I never thought about it too much before this past week.  I have had a doozy, but the point of this story is not to focus on what is happening in my life, but rather how it affects me in terms of my weight issues.  That’s what the series is about.

So I’m going to break it down real simple.  If I am bored, I eat.  If I am hungry, I eat.  If I am moody, I eat sweets.  Sometimes I can keep myself to the small sample of one of each type.  In candy, this can be reasonable.  If it is a box of doughnuts, that could be a disaster.  I have cravings.  I do obsess about food sometimes.  If I am lazy, I eat fast food.  If I am gearing up for a real honest to goodness attempt at not having junk food in the house, I will eat it all and then it is gone.  That is what I tell myself, I can really work on that plan after the bad food is all gone.  Not thrown in the trash, but devoured.

I am working on it.  All the time.  I find if I give into a craving when it happens, I can have what I am telling myself I need to eat, and then I can move past it.  The problem is, the damage is already done.  I have to take extra medicine for my sugars when I am not behaving. I have recently discovered, the hard way, that if I eat too much sugar, not only does it make me sleepy, like narcoleptic, but I can now feel sick to my stomach if I eat too many sweets.  Does that stop me?  Not if I am mad, or sad, or bored.  Not if I know in the back of my mind that there are cookies in the kitchen or that box of chocolates, well it is empty because I ate those a tray at a time so it was gone from the house faster.  And doing damage to my health by being in my belly.

It is easier to eat your emotions than deal with them.  When you associate feelings with food, you learn to rely on it to feel good things.  Food makes me feel better.  In the short term.  It keeps me from thinking about what is really happening, and from having to deal with it.

I have spent a lot of time eating, and a lot of time avoiding the reasons why I am eating what I am eating.  I have had to start to focus more on what I am eating, instead of just grabbing whatever is quick and easy.  It takes grocery list making, meal planning, meal prepping, and a plan for storing what I have made.  That consumes a lot of time and requires energy and the desire to spend the time on myself and my health.  To want to do better.  For me.

It does no good for me to meal prep too much because it would be a waste to not have the containers to divide it into meal sized portions.  I am now trying to plan different meals at times.  That is more work.  But my husband appreciates the efforts to make him his own food, as he has a day job too, and we can’t afford to eat out every day, financially or healthily.  It is hard, sometimes, to pace myself with it, as I would benefit from having extra food made in advance so I can eat healthy with little effort on a regular basis.  I go in circles, with the creative mind, and when I get on a roll, if I don’t go with it, I don’t know when I will feel like tackling the prep cooking again.  I go through productive spells, and slumps.  Currently, I am in a slump.

This is my second year of being on the Trim Healthy Mama Plan.  There are times when I follow it like a Bible, and I am able to be strict and keep myself on the plan.  The plan does have some foundation from religion, so it is an accurate description.  There are other times when I view it as a guideline, like when I am dabbling with it.  I like the 3-hour rule.  If you go off plan, you get right back on it in 3 hours.  Give yourself some grace, allow yourself to be human, and move on.  Don’t wallow in it.  Good in theory.  I like this concept.  But if I am being honest, I am cutting myself too much slack right now, and not making myself get back on plan as a reaction to keep the momentum going in the right direction.

I finally put it all together, this week, when I was thinking about writing this week’s story.  I need to stand up to my feelings.  It will be rough.  But I am avoiding them every time I eat them.  That is a bad place for anyone to be in.  It is time for me to take action.  I want out of this cycle.  When I follow Trim Healthy Mama, I do feel better, and I do see results.  Win win!  It’s time to up my game, and work on myself.  Nobody else is going to fix it for me, so I have to work on myself for myself and by myself.

After the week I just had, the hardest part is going to be convincing myself that I am worth the effort.  I know it in my heart, but it is covered in layers of unhealthiness, telling me the easy way is the best way.  Old habits die hard, and I am fighting for my life. Again.  One day at a time, one meal at a time, one snack at a time.  Every 3 hours, I can stay on plan, not need to get back on plan.  Start with something you can do as a beginning, and ride it through to the end.  I will keep reminding myself that I can do this, and the food is wonderful, so I should work harder at this.  I know I will see results.  I just have to be strong, and learn how to deal with my feelings.  

I am also going to have to change one of my favourite sayings.  I really believe that the day gets better after lunch.  It means you are closer to the end of your workday after lunch.  Or it means I am focusing on my food because I don’t want to think about work.  It’s going to be a hard thing to get a solid 8 hours of sleep every night, but I am going to try and focus on that, for a while.  Rest is important to your health, so it is a better thing to focus on, rather than food, or the next meal or snack.  I don’t like going to bed, I never have.  Once I am settled, it is hard to climb back out of bed.  I didn’t like to have to get in the shower when I was growing up, either.  Same thing, once I am in there, I don’t want to get out.  I have changed my train of thought on that one, I play music in the shower, it helps me try to keep it reasonable in length of time when I am in there.  And music makes my world go round.  If I can change my mind about that, then I can change my mind about lunch.  A new focus may be just what I need to get out of my slump.