Welcome everyone. I am definitely excited to start this journey. Perhaps if I log my experiences I will be more inclined to follow through. Disappointment is not something I like to instill upon myself so I'm hoping that by sharing my experiences with others I will be able to keep strong and move into a healthier light.
Throughout the past year I have been dealt some pretty hard blows to my potential health. I had been diagnosed with Lyme Disease and treated for that for 6 weeks and then I was told that I potentially had Lupus ontop of it. Luckily, the Lyme Disease was what showed a false positive for Lupus and I do not have it. However, symptoms persisted and I was then diagnosed with carpal tunnel in both of my wrists. I was given wrist splints to use at night but when they stopped working I then chose to endure cortisone shots in both of my wrists. That worked for about a month and now my wrists are acting up again but with having 4 young children I am not willing to have surgery to repair it because that would be a total of 12 weeks recovery and limited mobility in my hands. That will just have to wait.
We had a scare of me having MS mixed in with everything else so my physician scheduled an MRI of my brain. Luckily, once again, there were no signs of MS but there was a cyst found on my Pineal Gland which was potentially causing my symptoms. So I was then sent to a neurologist and it became another waiting game until I saw him. I was nervous, naturally, to see him because I had something in my brain that was larger than most found. The neurologist, however, told me not to worry and said that he believed that I still had the Lyme Disease. His diagnosis was "possible Lyme Disease with Fibromyalgia". So he prescribed me 6 weeks of heavy antibiotics which I knew would make me violently ill if it was Lyme Disease and medication for chronic pain to control the Fibromyalgia.
After 3 days on the antibiotics my body wasn't reacting the way it should for Lyme Disease so I knew deep down that Lyme Disease wasn't the cause of my symptoms or of my pain. I continued to take the medication, which is NOT a pain reliever but actually an antidepressant that physicians have found to work on nerve pain. I take this every single night as prescribed and have found that my symptoms have all faded away to another place and time. I hardly remember what it feels like to have my feet feel like they are burning or my head to hurt so bad that I want to throw up.
Why was that information important to tell on a first introduction? Well I find it very important to know someone's history and what exactly brought them to the point of being overweight or even obese. I got to the point that I ate to comfort myself from all of the things that were going on with my body. I chose not to exercise because I was so tired and felt drained by mid afternoon. I ate whatever I wanted, mainly eating out and overeating, because that's what made me feel better. I couldn't control what was happening to my body so I chose to control what I put in it, and I was putting a lot in it.
Nothing that I was doing, however, was making me happy. I got to 180 pounds and, while only being 5 foot 3 inches, found that to be in the early stages of obesity. I have since lost 10 pounds, putting myself in the "overweight" range but that is still far from where I want to be. Minimizing what I put into my body doesn't do any good when there is no diet or exercise routine. So I only ate 4 pieces of pizza instead of the 6 I normally would. Yes, I would lose weight that way but I was still putting tons of calories and fat into my diet.
So, for the past 5 days I have eaten nothing but foods high in protein, low in calories and fat, and no artificial flavoring. My drinks consist of home brewed iced tea, water, or Crystal Light. I have chosen to eat nothing but proteins, unfried foods, an very few carbs. My first week feels like a starvation period for my stomach but really it's not. My stomach just isn't used to "feeling" hungry. And the more I think about it, most people in the United States don't know what hunger really is.
We eat because we're supposed to eat 3 square meals a day. We don't necessarily eat because our body is hungry. Yes, a hunger pang can hit and you run for a candy bar to hold yourself over but actually being hungry and feeling that hunger for an extended period of time is something we as a society forget about. When we eat too much or when our body is not hungry we store fat and we all know that for women that usually goes into the butt and thighs. But did you know that when you are hungry your body burns off that fat and turns it into energy? Yes, that is good to eat when you are hungry but NOT when you are starving yourself. Fasting and then eating when your body is so nutrition deprived is just as bad as eating when you're not hungry at all. Your body stores everything that you have eaten and deprived it of so that it can make sure you survive another day. Your body has it's own fight or flight mechanism built in when it comes to food. Finding that medium between eating because it's the right thing to do and eating because of starvation is something that's hard to find.
I am going to put my best foot forward to find that happy medium. How long should I really be hungry before indulging in a small, healthy meal? Well, we shall see. It's not going to be easy but I know that by talking about it is going to really help me out. I started this week at 170 pounds and I'm hoping that by my birthday I will be down to 150 pounds. Yes, the first couple weeks are the weeks were you lose the most. Right now my body is losing all the fat I have stored up but soon I will be adding on muscle. I know my weight loss will decline and not be so drastic towards the end of my journey but I know that I will only be adding weight in muscle, not fat.
I challenge everyone to take a day and just eat when you are hungry, not to snack. What will you do with the rest of your day when you are normally eating chips infront of your favorite show? Jog in place, do crunches, lift weights.... Get your body moving. Keep it moving for an hour and see how you feel afterwards. Don't overdo it, just go slow. Walk if that's easier. But everytime you move you put more oxygen in your blood and you get a little bit more exercise than you started out with.
Good luck in your challenge and I hope that other's will follow me in my journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment