Weigh-In Wednesday: What-EVER Edition

It was actually a good week. My eating, while not beyond reproach, has been good. And on Tuesday morning, I was feeling optimistic about what the scale would show today. But then I started my period.

What-EVER. :) I will just be glad that I can honestly say I am quite satisfied with my eating this week.

Weigh-In Wednesday: My Brand New, Smashed to Bits Scale

Well, I bought a new scale for the master bathroom this week, not wanting to deprive my daughter nor G of the sheer joy it is to step on a scale once in awhile. Plus, my daughter's bathroom is so much nicer than mine, and when I weighed in her bathroom, I used her shower. Which made me feel sorry for myself with my teeny tiny shower stall. Which made me resent my 15 year old daughter for having such a luxurious space to herself. Which made me beat her. Oops, okay, that part didn't happen! But I did decide that perhaps downstairs bathroom people should stay out of the more plush upstairs bathrooms unless they planned to either wallow in grief for their tiny shower stall, or drag themselves all the way up the stairs to take a shower every morning. First world problems, I know!

So. New scale. Let me start by saying that the morning started off rough, as sleeping with G can be like sleeping with a newborn baby. He is up on the hour, every hour, it seemed, or at least last night he was. Most nights, it seems, although I have become better at cultivating my ability to sleep through it, haha. But at 1 a.m. he bashed his leg on the footboard of the bed for oh, I don't know, the 1000th time this week, but THIS time it surprised him and he screamed loud enough to wake me out of a dead sleep.

Plus the night before, I had a horrific nightmare about a spider, and I went to sleep afraid that I would dream about it again. What did this nightmare spider do? It existed. That's all it needed to do. In my dream, I ran across it in a crowded corner of a garage (not ours, thank goodness, or I'd be afraid it was a premonition). It was HUGE. With a fat, round purple body. In my dream, I was so terrified of it, I couldn't move. And it was trying to get away from me, but in doing so, it CAME TOWARD ME. In my dream, I was so scared I was even unable to scream, or move. It finally ran down a wall and its spell was broken and I was able to run across the garage. But horrifically, I could still see it on the wall from across the garage, it was so huge. 

In my dreams, I can never scream. Most of my nightmares center upon how utterly without voice I am, at a time I need to be able to scream. I hope, should the awful need arise in real life, I could manage more than the raspy squeaks I eek out in my dreams. I pray I never have to find out. :)

Well, two days later you can see how badly that spider dream terrified me, but it was no match for the horror I found waiting for me on the new scale:

Haha, I wish. I guess that's the New Scale Motivational Sticker.

Before I share my shame, let me make my excuses. I was so EXHAUSTED this morning, I utterly and truly forgot it was Weigh-In Wednesday until I was happily in the shower, minding my own business. And you know I have a weighing routine on Wednesdays: pee, weigh, shower. Never the three shall be done out of order.

Except today. I decided that I was really just postponing the inevitable if I didn't weigh in. Things are not going well and me and my bloated body know it. G and I rode the motorcycle to work yesterday for the first time in a long while, and when I put on my pants after the long season of not riding, I thought, "Okay, you've got maybe a couple more rides at this rate before you have to go buy new motorcycle pants." The pants that fit me from the time G and I first met (they were his son's quad-riding pants) do not so much fit me right now. I couldn't button them (to stay buttoned) although I could zip them. It would be mortifyingly embarrassing to have to buy new motorcycle pants, I'm telling you. And what a waste of money!

I can't feel my ribs and hips the way I've gotten so accustomed to doing, anymore. My breasts feel huge and round and heavy. My chest, or décolletage, feels puffy and padded. I am miserable in my own body.

Another excuse is that I had some major dental work on Thursday, and spent much of the next several days on pain pills, which wreak havoc on my digestion, despite all my best efforts. But I remedied that situation on Sunday - although I still took some pain pills up through last night, I have been really suffering. :( So, constipation is an issue, but it's not *the* issue.

Finally, who's to say the new scale isn't more accurate than the old one? I may replace the one in my daughter's bathroom, too, it's so dramatically different. How old is that old scale, I wonder?

And the new scale wasn't going to pull any punches, either. Look how bright those numbers are! They seared themselves in my eyes. Blech. 

Oh sure, *now* you'll orient the pictures in the right direction.

I can say all the things I need to say, but I keep saying them without doing the right things. So for right now I'm just gonna shut my g*d mouth. That's the biggest thing I need to do to take off the weight anyway, hahaha.

Weigh-In Wednesday: Stoopidhead Scale Edition

How fun it is for me to post Weigh-In Wednesday pictures week after week, as I bounce up and down the full gamut of the 160s! It has become one of my very most favorite things to do, and talk about. Not.

I do believe, if nothing else, that Weigh-In Wednesday has done a lot to get my weight in check (argh, and even that's all relative), although I'm clearly not losing. Things had gotten ugly with the scale and my scale avoidance, and my I've ruined it all now, I might as well eat whatever I want philosophy. Nice to know that even after all the weight gain, surgeries and weight loss, I'm still my same old food-ufcked twisted self underneath it all. Insert deeeeeep self-pitying sigh.

I'm so over it.

Now, at least, I'm hoisting my ass onto that scale every Wednesday without letting myself off the hook. I started back up with myfitnesspal.com and yesterday's eating was 1248 calories. This is actually a lot, considering I had only protein shakes during the day! But what I hate?? HATE??? My Fitness Pal says "if you ate like this every day, in five weeks you would weigh 163 pounds."

I simply do not need many calories to operate this machine. I hate that the reality is that 1200 calories don't go very far, and if I eat that, or certainly any more than that, I gain weight.

WHATEVER.

Can you tell how cranky I am about this this morning? Haha. Yesterday I had three Muscle Milk Light protein shakes from Costco (which are lactose free and thus did not give me the nausea, gas and bloating that the Costco Premier Brand shakes had started doing to me so badly). Dinner was not a wise selection, as when I learned that Greg was working surprise OT until midnight, we switched from the planned grilled salmon and broccoli to canned chili over Fritos with lettuce and melted cheese. Haha! Hello, children, Mommy's home! Did you have doubts that Greg is not the lynch pin to all this wonderful eating and delicious meals? Nope, when he's gone, the old mommy resurfaces! ;)

Well, in my defense, there was a reason. We had the salmon all defrosted and a yummy meal planned, and G was looking forward to it, too. And yesterday, running for the bus, which I very nearly missed AGAIN, I hurt something in my back, or hip, or thigh, or something. I did this last week, too, but yesterday my body SCREAMED out in protest. Really super painful. My objectives last night upon arriving home were to take a hot epsom salt bath and find the right combination of drugs and alcohol to make my body stop killing me. ;)

Frito taco salad was a perfect meal to direct my 12yo budding chef to prepare without assistance, in other words. :)

I need to go see a physical therapist about whatever is going on. I fear that the 30-day ab challenge situps have done horrifying things to my lower back and spinal fusion. This is an awful nerve pain, I have something way tweaked and I'm a little scared. :( When I had that spinal fusion, they said it's an excellent 10-year remedy to all the pain, and December 2014 is ten years. :'( I truly believe that this is just aggravated from the sit-ups, which I will surely not be doing any more of. I have been largely pain-free for so long, I am not toooooo worried about returning to the old pre-fusion days of back pain so bad I didn't care if I lived or died. But I am a teensy bit scared.

Anyway. This is day two of protein shakes during the day (which are vile, but better than the Premier brand for me). I am delighted to have found something that I can use to kick-start myself, as I think I need a mental reset with regard to eating, eating, eating...always seem to be eating these days. Yesterday, I thought I would starve. to. death but today I am feeling good about taking control.

Onward and upward. Err, downward. You know what I mean. :)

Weigh-In Wednesday: On-Time Edition!

Hey - it's Wednesday and I weighed in, as usual, but I'm actually posting it on Wednesday! Or that is my intention as I start out, haha.

The scale pleased me this morning.

Weigh-in day got off to a lurching start as I remembered the event as I was stepping into the shower. Because I am superstitious and ridiculous, I only like to weigh in before I take a shower. God only knows how much water weight that adds on in the shower! So I turned off the shower, left the bathroom to retrieve my phone, came back in to hop on the scale. Which was nowhere to be found in my tiny downstairs bathroom.

I had a pretty good idea who may have taken the scale, so I grabbed my camera/phone and ventured upstairs to my sleeping 15-year-old's room. Sure enough, there was the scale in a corner of her bathroom! I decided to leave it there, as it is probably good for her to have access to it, as well. I just took my picture there - her bathroom floor is so much nicer than mine, don't you think?

So, Alli and I are on Day 9 of the 30-day ab challenge. I was dragged into participating, but I'm glad. I am a little concerned that since embarking on this great adventure, my low back spinal fusion has been very sore. Like sore when I go to bed, sore when I wake up. Yesterday was a rest day, so when I do today's challenge I will try to use really great posture. When I was briefly lifting weights, I had this same sort of problem, but it was mid-back above the fusion. I expect that was probably due to poor posture while lifting, and my back is just not at all forgiving about that sort of thing. I am thinking, as I sit here in pain first thing in the morning, that probably sit-ups and crunches are not going to be a great thing for me to be doing. However the ab challenge also includes Leg Lifts! and Planks! so I will modify as necessary to continue doing the challenge with Alli.

Weigh-In Wednesday: Very Belated Edition

Oops, I did weigh in last Wednesday, but have been super, super busy and didn't have time to post it here. Just holding steady, I guess!

I do not understand the random photo orientation on these pictures!

Well, I am not happy with the numbers but I am not unhappy, either, I suppose. This week I did do my mini-workout of walking my youngest to and/or from school several times. I also pooped out on it several times. :) It was COLD here last week! Also, my oldest made plans for my limited evening hours on at least one occasion, demanding to be taken grocery shopping or else she'd wage war on me. Teenage, hormonal war, ugh. I'll pick the unplanned trip to the grocery store every time, haha.

Last week was busy with, among other things, the parade to end all parades! The city was *OVERRUN* with Seahawks fans, and I was happy to be out in the incredibly huge throngs of crowds along with everyone else. Crazy! They say 750,000 people or more crowded onto the 4th Avenue to cheer the Seahawks for their Super Bowl win. I wouldn't doubt the estimated numbers, I have never seen anything like it. I have some pictures, but the one I wanted to post here was the one that reminded me that even though I am struggling with my weight, I don't need to beat myself senseless about it, either. This is a nice picture of me and my coworker, whom you may remember I call my Sugar Daddy*.

Greg says Don and I make a nice looking couple, haha.

*Well, Sugar Daddy is tongue in cheek, as when I started working with him, he and his longtime partner, Doug, owned two beautiful homes in Seattle, both of which were for sale. They had decided to live in whichever one didn't sell first. I was very recently a single mom, and I lobbied hard for him to give me one of the properties, which he did not. Even though I offered him the ready-made family his mom had always longed for from him, haha. Anyway, Don doesn't deliver often on his Sugar Daddy role, but he does occasionally treat me to lunch or SBUX. :)

Aw, I take some of my favorite pictures with Don.
A trip down memory lane: this was from August 2012.

Alright, more later! My oldest turns fifteen today, it's a happy occasion!

Weigh-In Wednesday: Thursday Edition

This is actually from yesterday, but it was a very technologically challenging day for me and I wasn't able to post here. It started out bad: I noticed that the scale, when I stepped on it, was looking a little dim. I was also taking the picture in my new bathroom at the new house, and so when I moved the scale to try for better lighting - the weight was significantly different. Uh-oh. I tried a few locations and still the number fluctuated within 5 pounds or so.

So I changed the batteries on the scale, thinking this might help a bit. Not really. Maybe the bathroom floor is uneven. It is on the ground floor of a daylight rambler, so the floor is concrete, I'm sure. I moved the scale to a place that seems nice and level, and it gave me the same weight several times in a row, so I decided that's just the weight we'll go with, and I'll weigh in the same spot each time.

I went to take a picture and my iPhone camera was full and wouldn't take any pictures. Isht. People, I am doing all this in the morning before I take my shower (and after I go pee, haha)! I gotta get ready! Plus I have three kids to get ready! Ok, deleted some pictures. Snapped a couple pictures from the phone. The numbers are still dim - I wonder if this old scale is giving up the ghost? Now that we're in a bigger house with more bathrooms, maybe I'll pick up another scale. Everyone in the house should have the same opportunity for the joy that is stepping on the scale in the morning, bah.

Who even knows if this is accurate.

I wouldn't have been surprised to see the number skyrocket from last week. I just feel *fat.* Really bulky. Very unhappy with my body. Blech. An effect of weight gain after the tummy tuck is that my tummy doesn't (didn't, anyway) have fat cells to fill up, so fat goes to other parts of your body. Specifically for me, boobs, thighs and arms. I feel like the Michelin tire man. Blargh!

On a good note, we are all moved into the new place and we all love it! It will take some time to get settled in, but we have actually made wonderful progress and in some places, it is looking quite homey. To celebrate a nice new house, we are doing things like taking our shoes off at the door, the kids are making their beds in the morning, etc. No food or drink in bedrooms. Eating at the table only. This is largely due to the fact that the old house was all hardwood and this house is all nice clean carpet. Greg is ecstatic about that, he doesn't like hardwoods. I prefer hardwoods over carpet, myself. But the move was a great time to make some new habits and keep the house looking nice.

Hey - on another good note, I got back gobs of money from the old house: last month's rent, full month's security deposit, plus I sold my w/d to the new landlord. I used this money and rolled it right into PAYING OFF MY TUMMY TUCK! Yay! This is a big win, as it's no fun having credit card debt rolling around sucking up money and accumulating interest.

I have a couple fitnessy plans in the works, though neither of them are particularly groundbreaking. I'm going to cancel the Y membership, since we are rarely using it. Greg and his f'ing family cooked formal dinners really screw with doing anything else in the evening outside the home, I will admit. :) When it was just me and the kids, we ate out I would guess 3-4 times a week. When I made dinner at home, it was lots of prepared foods. We do neither with Greg, haha.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this, for sure. I have a nice gym in my building at work and dues are less than $30. Sabrina and I are going to join, and I'm just going to figure out a way to get up there, even for 20 minutes at a time. I dunno.

I'll at least get a little walk in every day as we're about a mile away from Reid's daycare. I'm planning to have Greg drop me off there and Reid and I will walk home. When there's time, I'll go home with Greg and walk to and from the daycare so I'm picking up a little more time. The kids (and dinner, dinner, don't forget thinking about and planning and preparing dinner) fill up this time, though, as lacrosse starts next week and my daughter's extra-curricular's require a fair bit of ferrying around after work, too.

Sheesh, I just made myself tired writing this out. I miss my bike.

Weigh-In Wednesday: In Which I Admit Everything I Do is Wrong

I would prefer that this be a "Wordless Wednesday" post.

That says 168.3.
I couldn't get the light right and felt it was self-torture to keep trying.

But, here I am, ready to blather and make excuses. I am stress eating, I think. I feel so frigging *hungry* all the time! This cannot be true. I am battling old demons. The stress of the move, maybe, the stress of...I don't know. I know I have a lot going on, but I don't feel like anything is particularly challenging or out of control right now. I do know that I feel edgy, edgy, edgy. It is so CLAUSTROPHOBIC living out of boxes, living around boxes, thinking about packing constantly, etc.

I'm a totally claustrophobic person, anyway, and I've been feeling it lately. I have a new coworker who is very chatty in the morning and I feel like she is laying in wait for me at our little pod when I come in in the morning. I have noticed I am typically in a bad mood before I get to my desk each day, haha, which is highly unusual for me. I do not like to speak in the morning. :) Call me a bad employee, I don't give a isht. I need time to warm up.

We are up to our eyebrows in boxes at home, in a house that was already cramped and cluttered with too much stuff. I can barely breathe when I'm home...I cannot wait to get moved in to the new place. Soooon. Saturday AM bright and early, we are outta here!

I'm sorry, it's a terrible divorced mom thing to say, but sometimes I miss our days of 50/50 custody. Lots of times I feel like the old woman who lived in a shoe, with so many children she didn't know what to do. Having the kids home most of the time feels good and right, but there are times when I think about how I would cry out of loneliness when the kids were gone and I was home alone in that big, empty house.

A side note: as a formerly single woman with children, I *hated* to be told by friends that "Oh, what I wouldn't do for some time alone!" etc. I would never wittingly say this to a lonely single person. But as a not-single mother of three, I have to say, sometimes I would kill for some time alone. :) I just wouldn't tell any lonely single person that, as I know how awful it can feel. But still. I am having to draw on distant memories to relish those days of what am I going to do, I am soooooooo alone.

Now I always know what I'm going to do, I am going to be surrounded by lots of people in a crowded, box-laden home. 

Saturday. Soon. We will be ready. But in the meantime, I eat. I'm eating well, lots of veggies and hard-boiled eggs and chicken breast, etc. But the Seahawks playoff game was a root beer float, Doritos, baked beans, potato salad and hot dog. A Klondike bar. Insatiable appetite these days.

I am a little person. I don't even have to eat much food to gain weight, it simply does not take a lot of fuel to run my engine. It is not fair. It is what it is.

I think I need to get back to blogging. I am forcing myself on that ufcking scale every week, but I am starting to avoid the blog for it's hatefulness of putting up my scale picture. I'm not running, I'm not cycling, I'm not losing weight, ugh, I feel like I am without a theme. Adrift.

But I was thinking about it this morning: first and foremost, this blog was about my gastric sleeve surgery. I am putting my head in the sand by not acknowledging that the challenges I face are part of that life-changing surgery. It wasn't a magic wand. It wasn't a quick fix or a cheat. I lost my weight and I still have to put in the work to be where I want to be. And I'm not.

I'm more than the weight loss surgery, but all these struggles are part of the experience. I wonder if I let myself feel like it's part of the journey and not my failure, if my mindset will change. As usual, this is just a very, very rough time of the year for me, and as usual, I wonder if moving away from Seattle to a sunnier climate would improve things.

Well, I am thinking, thinking, thinking. I think the new place will do marvelous things for the whole family. Space. Amenities. Comfort. Getting our belongings out of these friggin' boxes.

Weigh-In Wednesday: Dear Scale, You Suck

Ah, frustration. I just cannot seem to do this right, and I'm not sure why. On Saturday, 1/11, the three year anniversary of my weight loss surgery, I was feeling upbeat and happy about my progress. I took a picture of the scale, with hopeful confidence that this Wednesday's weigh in would win big on the scale:

You go, girl!

I've been back to weighing myself every day, because I decided these 20+ pounds I accumulated from my lowest weight did not magically appear overnight, but were instead a result of my head in the sand scale avoidance. So I knew that the numbers were creeping up, even though I do not consider it fair or accurate. Alright, I suppose it's accurate, at least, haha.

Dear Scale, You Suck.

Well, I am on my period, anyway. It's really not faaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrr. And I have to tell you, in a factual here's an effect of weight loss surgery that you may benefit from hearing about way, I continue to have a real problem with constipation. Is this from the sleeve? From my gallbladder removal (I don't think so as I believe the opposite problem is more common)? Just my lucky draw of old woman aging symptoms? I dunno. At any rate, I realize I have been saying for three years "I need to find a way to address this" and I really do. I eat gobs of fresh fruit and veggies. I am super well-hydrated. Ah well. I feel, in all honesty, this is contributory problem to the number on the scale this week.

Whatevs.

Big developments on the home front, as G and the kids and me have found a new home. We are all super excited. It's in the neighborhood: this will be my FOURTH address in a one mile radius following my divorce, haha. I tell you, when those kids grow up and throw in my face that I didn't do everything I could for them, I will throw back FOUR ADDRESSES IN A ONE MILE RADIUS SO YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO CHANGE SCHOOLS!

So there.

Anyway, it's a fantastic home with a commensurate rental rate. We will have gobs more space and there are tons of man-cave features for G that have him practically singing with joy in anticipation. My daughter will have her own private luxury bathroom. My sons have a wooded ravine adjacent to the back yard to lose themselves in. The whole family is humming with anticipation and pleasure at the thought of our new home.

For me, it has kitchen cabinets. And counter space. Whoa. I never understood what a luxury this was until I lived the last four years without them (the teeny tiny condo we lived in had a worse kitchen than this one, but not by much).

The move date is a bit ambiguous right now, it will be as early as next weekend or as late as the end of February. We're just trying to hash things out between the two places, as they're doing a bit of work for us on the new place before we move in. It's all very exciting. And stressful. I have been up since 2:30 a.m., suddenly waking with moving organization thoughts and such that kept me up for the rest of the night. I was in good company, though, as when I woke up G said he was laying awake since 1:00 a.m. with the same thoughts, haha. We're both in peak form today, in other words.

Weigh-In Wednesday

Welllllllllll...it ain't setting the world on fire, but at least it's down-ish.

I will say I'm eating lots better, and lots of veggies. Recently, I have been eating baby spinach salads with only a few chopped strawberries, a diced hard-boiled egg and this, the yummiest non-dressing dressing ever:

Oh, it's so very, very good.

I'm (mostly) tracking my food, too. All in all, I would say I'm heading in a very good direction. And it's amazing how quickly my body responds to eating well: I have been feeling pretty darn good lately.

Which is good, since my personal life is a roller-coaster ride right now! Ups and downs, highs and lows. More on that later, but I wanted to get this posted while it was still Wednesday...

Weigh-In Wednesday, Ketchup Edition

The holidays and a bout with a very bad cold kept me from posting my Wednesday weigh-ins for the last couple weeks. But I did force myself onto the scale on Christmas morning...um, Merry F'ing Christmas to me, as I nearly picked up the scale and threw it out the window:

Oops, this is not going well.

Well, I did buckle down and clean up my eating quite a bit. It's all these sweets, I tell you. I don't honestly think my eating had been that bad in the week prior, I think that all the SUGAR I had been eating between Thanksgiving and Christmas finally translated on the scale as fat. 

Greg and I both got very ill right after Christmas. My New Year's Day weigh in was a tad better, but was also tainted, I knew, by the cough syrup with codeine that I had been guzzling since Saturday. I hadn't pooped in days and days! I felt like a stuffed sausage, so constipated and miserable. 

I knew I had done better than this, I just need to give birth to that food baby.

Yesterday, I took steps to rectify the situation, so I allowed myself an updated weigh-in today, which I feel better reflects reality. 

Still up, but getting better.

I'll just post this now and get to work on my Why 2014 is FreeJulie's Year post that I'd rather talk about, haha. I am glad that I'm at least holding myself accountable by getting on that scale - I have to say, getting on a scale with a camera on Christmas morning, knowing it was going to be up, up, up...well, that takes grit.