Weekly Weigh-In Post Vacation

Welp.....big ol' sigh.  I've just returned from vacation with my Family and my parents.  My mother is a cooking Fiend.  I expected what I Found on the scale this morning.  We ate Fast Food on the drive down and the drive back.

The drive down was better, as we ate a Chick Fil A dinner in which I had a chicken wrap, Fries, and a pop.  The Following morning I ate nothing, as I had driven us to Atlanta from Michigan and was Fast asleep.  The Dole Shakers that I packed for everybody didn't stay Frozen even that long, so that planned low-point breakfast was a Flop anyway.  I know that I said it would be easy to Find a grocery story to buy them when needed, but I Forgot to Factor in my obsessive husband....Mr. F wants to drive straight through stopping only for bathroom breaks and gas refills. I have no idea what the others ate since I was out like a light. We ordered pizza as soon as we arrived at our rental because we had to unpack and get organized before we could go grocery shopping.  However, my mom had brought all the groceries into the house because she travels with only my dad and has room in her car. We drive separately via two different directions, and they usually tack on extra travel and sightseeing in other states on their way down.

I tried to eat according to my plan.  I took my oatmeal and bought green smoothie ingredients so that I only had to worry about dinner, but my mom had other plans.  I had even taken a number of bags of the SnaPea Crisps I love for snacking, of which I didn't do a lot of. I was too Full all of the time. I made it through the First Few days saying no thank you just Fine, but then I ran out of what I needed and mom had taken control of the refrigerator.  I actually only cooked one of my own meals, Pig on a Stick, a couple of salads, etc.  I resisted her homemade Belgian waffles piled high with pie Fillings and whipped cream until one theme park day we returned to the car at 10 p.m. to eat the chicken Caesar wraps I had planned out to discover Mr. F had covered the packaged wraps in ice and they were ruined by the water. I was starving and therefore ate one of the nutty bars and Cheetos bags he had packed. That night, at 11 p.m. as we all showered park grime off of our bodies, my mom made us all one of her Belgian waffles, and I ate it. I was too tired, too hungry, and too sore from walking all day long to care. She had bought two different kinds of ice cream.  I have no idea what Flavors they were. I didn't care to look and therefore didn't have any of that. So, overall, there were nonscale victories and just plain diet Failures.

I'm really shocked at the condition of produce in Florida.  I just can't get over how poor it is in the grocery stores.  The apples I bought for my smoothies were brown in the middle, as if they were going bad from the middle out somehow.  The avocadoes, which we can usually Find down there were bad as well.  I've never seen greener bananas in my life anywhere, not even in Michigan.

We had three park days in which I packed our lunches and in which we ate dinner at the park one day. The other two park days we waited until we got home to eat a dinner, and the traffic varied, so one night it was 10 p.m. and the other 11 p.m., and we all know how eating a dinner at that time of night derails weight loss. I had originally planned to take salads with me for my lunch, but my parents liked my salads and ate them.  Just after mid-vacation, I threw in the towel altogether.  I didn't go all ham on anything. I just quit thinking about it and quit worrying about what number I would get to report to you today.

I, as of today, weighed in at 234.5 pounds, which is a 3.75-pound gain since the last weigh-in I recorded on the blog, but 5.3 pounds more than the last recorded weight on my tracker at the beginning of March. That isn't too bad considering it probably isn't all vacation related, and I ate enough Fast Food on that trip than I have in months and care to ever again. I haven't really tracked any calories via MyFitnessPal or counted my points either because I can't Find my points slider right now.

Prior to vacation I had been suffering from a wry neck for months.  It has now worked it's way down into my arm via tingling, but the last two days has included numbness in my fingertips as well.  I'm tired of waiting for it to be completely Fixed and plan to restart my two-mile walking routine again tonight, weather permitting. I'm just glad I can move my neck again. Maybe actual movement via exercise will help because sitting around waiting for it to get better isn't working. While on vacation, I got what I had been calling my annual theme-park rash.  My ankles are itchy and sore.  I'm hoping that is not the case when I set out on my walk this evening, but when I got out of the car to pump gas yesterday after being in the car all day, it was the case and I Found myself waddling and grimacing. 

So that's what I've been up to since the beginning of March.....the chiropractor visits for a wry neck, arm tingling, fingertip numbness, a theme-park rash, a vacation derailment, and a cooking-Fiend of a mother who cooks Southern style.

Some will consider a painful and debilitating wry neck and a vacation excuses, but I don't.  I consider them obstacles and challenges.  How are you doing?

Reasons #3 and #4 Why I'm Fat -- Water & Pop Consumption

This is installment #3 and includes 2 reasons why I'm fat from my Reasons or Excuses post.

Since it's Water Wednesday reminder time for myself, I will cover that.  Here's a post from the past explaining how and why water consumption is so important, but today I'm talking about how I have avoided accepting that somehow. 

Yup.  It's a reason, not an excuse.  I don't drink enough water and drink way too much pop.  It started when my parents moved me to the country where there was well water when I was about 7.  Stinky well water.  So stinky, I called it Fart water.

I honestly don't know how I survived with all this talk about how important drinking water is for us all.  I can remember moments of feeling I had no choice but to drink it.  It caused me great anxiety and I would hold my breath to get it down, but it was rare.  Since there was no such thing as bottled water, I can only assume I survived through the school years by drinking the city water at the schools I attended.  Summers?  I'm not sure how.  My body must have adapted to sucking every ounce of water it could from anything else I took in.  I'm assuming it was those summer months that brought on a thirst that made me gulp down the occasional glass.

It was the better part of my young and adolescent life that we moved between cities and the boonies with well water.  As soon as I was 18, I moved back to the city, but then I met my now husband who got me back to the country.  By that time, however, we had bottled water in the 1990s.  I bought little jugs of it here and there, but I had already reached the point where I traveled with a pop in my hand or at my side at all times.  I was never without it.  Water is just so boring.

Fast Forward to today, and guess what?  I live in a house with well water AGAIN.  I also spent the last 12 years being a work-at-home mother that called for late nights, and the caffeinated pop helped to combat the resultant fatigue running on 4 hours of sleep brought about throughout the day.  The self-employment/work-at-home status overlaps into a lot of my reasons really.  It may be one of my biggest regrets thus far. 

I buy jugs of water, and the pop habit is a hard one to break.  Food tastes better with it as a side at dinner and I drink it in the morning and all day.  I don't do coffee as I can't stand it.  Judge away I suppose.  I know you're out there.  Doesn't matter really.  It's a lot of calories, and empty calories at that.  I guess I just adjusted to everything that passed my lips having flavor--good flavor.  I KNOW this.  I have to Force myself to drink water.  I can literally go months without ever taking a drink of water, and it doesn't bother me--only my conscience because I know better deep down inside now.

This is an ongoing challenge for me, but it's a battle I know I can ultimately win.  It's a lifestyle change....even a deeply ingrained subconscious habitual or psychological change that I have to bring into my consciousness and keep it there.  

If you would like a recap of some of the other identifiable Factors to my Fatness, here are the previous two so far:

Reason #1:  Sleep Hygiene/Lack Thereof
Reason #2:  Self-Employment/Work-At-Home Status through the Baby Days


Is inadequate water consumption or soda pop intake a part of your problem? Why do you think you substitute pop for water?

I'm baaaack.

I disappeared for a while, seeing how nobody was viewing this blog anyway. First, I found out that we would need to pay more than I paid for the NutriSystem food each month in health insurance premiums (ironic considering I'm trying to get healthy isn't it?) (and thanks Obamacare). At that point, I was getting tired of eating the same foods over and over again anyway.

I got a little cocky thinking I could combine NutriSystem and my old Weight Watchers plans and do it all on my own with my own food, but I couldn't continue to pay the plan fees and the new insurance premiums together. My insurance does not cover weight loss program fees. I did what I had planned for quite a while.

I also then underwent a medical procedure last fall that put my menopausal symptoms into overdrive. I was hardly getting any sleep, so I stayed up all night until the point of exhaustion when I was sure I would toss and turn less and not spend much time flat on my back unconsciously trying to cool off, which all exacerbates my degenerative back condition, but it happened anyway. In March, my back went into spasm and I was diagnosed with a sprained back. I looked like hell.  I went from hearing "You are really losing weight!" to "You have some serious bags under your eyes!"

At this point, I entered into that self-defeating place where I feel like I can't win for losing, that the universe is lined up against me, like I'm just treading water trying to keep my head above the water. Then I started drinking pop again on the run with the kids. When I started drinking the pop, I started skipping the meals again.

I tried some herbal supplements and remedies to deal with the hot flashes, but for some reason, it magnified them tenfold in intensity and frequency. I was miserable. I couldn't even put on make up because I could melt it off in a sweaty Freakin' instant. It actually became embarrassing enough that I avoided going out at all, quit volunteering at my son's school, etc. I was constantly lobster red and shiny. When you're heavy, that just looks plain bad, like you're about to have a heart attack.

I finally got an appointment, after calling for one months ago, and started a new treatment. I was very skeptical, but it's working. I'm day five in. My back is still very sensitive to certain movements and activities, so I have to remain ever aware of what I do until it heals to stay out of spasms. I'm sleeping better, feel like I'm tossing and turning less, and am definitely having fewer Flashes (only two, what I call, warm Flashes).

After a summer spent updating the house from hardwood floor refinishing to painting every room and what feels like eons of bickering, bored children (we didn't do anything with them during all this refinishing business and figured they'd live), and with school just around the corner, I'm feeling hopeful again that I can reenter the meal-planning phase for myself. I can wait to re-enter the workout phase for the physician's okay, but there is no reason to waste anymore time getting back to the weight loss in the interim.

I have at this point regained most of the weight I had lost over the last 10 months, sadly. This means I'm starting over, almost completely.  Not quite, but close enough.  Here I go!