It Happens to Me, Too!!

I wanted to write a quick post to let you all know that stalls happen to me, too.  In fact, most of the time, I feel stalled.  I've just gotten to the point where I just let the process happen.  I eat my macros and I wait it out.  Sometimes, when I step on the scale (like yesterday) I'm 10 lbs heavier!  10!

Now, bear in mind that 10 lb increase over a month, is likely different than a 10 lb increase in 2 days.  Unless you are severely over-eating, it is IMPOSSIBLE to gain 10 pounds of fat over night.  What is likely is that it's water weight.  It's unlikely to gain any fat over night like that!!  So whether it's 2 lbs or 10 lbs.  Try not to worry, it happens to all of us!

Ok, now be impressed with my technological savvy.  Here is a pic of my graph for the past year with My Fitness Pal. I'm too lazy to take a screen shot and my husband is probably cringing right now, but it is what it is. This graph show that there were many weeks where I had no loss.  It doesn't show the first part of my weight loss because

it was not included in the graph.  I lost about a pound every day for the first 3 weeks.  I'd say it was a few every few days.  Now, that doesn't happen at all.  In fact, the weight loss seriously slowed after a few weeks.  Now it's around 5 pounds a month.  Or it was.  I'm not really worried about that at this point.  I just kind of know that it will keep decreasing and trust the process. 

I get messages about this all the time.  So I figured I'd take the time to address it.  In My Fitness Pal, I also only report the decreases.  Frequently, the scale goes up a few pounds.  Our bodies are constantly trying to keep themselves even and stable.  This is normal, it's called homostasis.  They want to hang on to the fat storage we have.  Water weight varies from day to day in most people by a few pounds.  This is completely normal.  There are many reason for this.  Injuries, dehydration, medications, foods we eat, sickness, menstrual cycle.  This can all play a role.  Try not to stress too much about it.  Just know that it happens to all of us.  Whether you are losing for first pound or your 77th pound.

I know for myself what caused my 10 pound gain.  I also know that it's something that won't be repeated and I can tell it's finally going back down!  I am hoping to lose a few more pounds so that's good news!  And while it bugs me, I am not going to let it worry me.  I'm going to keep eating what I know works for me and just trust the process.

Hang in there, friends!!

Year Eleven and the Return of the Grief Train

I think people forget.  They forget that I am broken inside.  They forget that I lost a child.  Not literally. I mean, they know.  They just get used to me being me the rest of the year.  The woman who tries to live life anyway. The woman who works to have positivity.  In the past this time of year has caused me great distress.  In the past 10 years I have become more at ease when it comes to the loss of my child.  It still hurts.  It will always hurt.  But it is as part of me as my hearing loss or the fact that I have two arms or that I have 5 kids.

So this time of year even when I don't see it happening at first, the darker side of me comes out.  Little things start to show up kind of subtly.  My sense of humor gets darker, my frustration level goes up as triggers for my daughter's death become more and more apparent.  Maybe you know people like this.  Maybe you are one of those people.  These are just coping mechanisms.  December... January... February... March... then finally I can breathe.  I've worked hard to identify and acknowledge and decide if I want to deal or not deal with a particular trigger.  To get to this spot was a lot of work.  In the past, this time of year was just a free-for-all of emotions.  This past year, I've felt that I've really grown as a person.  I can usually see what is happening and I try to make a choice on how and if I am going to let it affect me.  Sometimes, it still catches me off guard, but I try to back track through it, and see how I can find it faster the next time.  I know this probably seems foreign to some of you.  But crying every day for 4 months and just letting out that dark side of me without any thought to what anyone else thinks or how they are affected isn't an option. That scares people. Truthfully, it scares me, too. There is no freedom in feeling flooded with emotion. There is no safety in feeling crazy.

This year, even I forgot. Here it is almost diagnosis day and I've been filled with emotions. I couldn't put my finger on it. Other events have been going on and I thought it was just that. My friend Cary, lost her daughter to a brain tumor and it's a lot of PSTD feelings we go through, especially when it's someone "close" in our journey. I've work really hard not to cry. I've lost that battle several times. But certainly not as bad as it could have been.  I've had people come up to me and tell me "they are concerned" and now my friend posted that I've seemed negative lately.  Yeah, maybe a little.  Nothing like I've been in the past.  In the past, I'd be so stressed that I wouldn't be able to do anything but lie in bed and watch netflix or sleep or yell or eat.  Just knowing this day was coming.  The cycle was beginning.  Leading up to Emerald's birthday.  This year she will be gone longer than she was alive.  I can't even type that without tearing up.  But as another friend suggested, I don't have to allow those feelings to bounce around in my head just because they are there.  I can allow them in when I want them in and I can tell them to go away and come back later.  I do have control over that. The fact, that I didn't connect Sofie's death with the beginning of Emerald's journey this year is both kind of liberating for me as I work down the grief journey and at the same time (only other people who have been in this place will understand) I sort of feel guilty for forgetting about Emerald, like it wasn't important. To get off track a little, I don't think Emerald would mind.  She quite literally wanted me to be happy. She said so. So yay?  "Finally!" she is probably thinking.

This whole grief thing has been quite a journey.  It's not over.  It won't ever be over.  Be gentle with me.  Like I've learned to be with myself.  If I'm a bit impatient or seem frustrated and it doesn't seem like me, then realize that it IS actually me.  It's me coping with a pretty shitty event in my life.  And please know that I've come a really long way in finding happiness and trying to make sense of it all.  Because it's my life.  Oh and if I make a post that's kind of obnoxious and I'm trying to be funny... Well, that's just who I am.  <3

Couponing: Welcome to Your Hobby!

I started couponing a little over a year ago.  Although, there are months that go by that my husband accuses me of just stockpiling coupons, I try to go out weekly and get at least the easy deals.

Lots of people ask about how to get started or want to understand how it works.  There is a lot to go into it and it's a skill to develop just like anything else.  But even if I can save a small amount on my bill, I'm feeling good about that.

Couponing is literally trading pieces of paper instead of cash.  Lots of these little pieces of paper are free. In fact, technically they all are since they come free with the paper, although I buy just the paper to donate to the vet's office and I just use the coupons!!

I started off by just getting the local paper, I get 12 (2 per person in my household) and collecting coupons that way.  I have a file system where I take each insert and file it by date. I don't cut the coupons out.  I don't take them all with me.  This has good and bad things about it.  Good:  I don't waste my time cutting out crap I'm not going to have match ups for. And I can't make any unplanned purchases (If I want to save money)  I don't have a huge binder with me. Bad:  I don't have them with me when I come across clearance items. 

So, now I've got my coupons.  Every week I go to a coupon match up site for the store I want to buy my groceries.  I like Publix because they have the best deals, are the most coupon friendly and the stores are usually really nice to go into.  There are a few coupon match up sites on Facebook.  CIA coupon spy or the couponing couple, to name two.  The Couponing Couple has a lot of different stores to match from.  Dollar Stores, grocery stores, target.  I look at the blog to see the match ups for the week.  What these sites do, is take what the sale is, and post available manufacturer and store coupons.  And tell you where the coupon is located.  For instance:

Scott toilet paper is on sale this week from $10.49 to $7.49 at my store a for 12 roll pack.  The site also tells me that there is a $4.00 off coupon in the purple flier that is in the store.  And then lists every available manufacturer coupon that they know is available at the time of the blog post. Here is an example from the Couponing Couple's site.

Sometimes the manufacturer coupons are printable and sometimes they are found in the inserts from the news.  Sometimes, they are those blinking ones that pop out at you and sometimes they are peelies on the product themselves.  Those are kind of just a crap shoot to find.  With this toilet paper I ended up with 6 coupons, so I got 6 purple fliers and now I saved a "buttload" (HAHA) of money on TP.

I am going to add that sometimes there are also "thresh hold" coupons available.  This is a coupon put out by the store that is for a certain amount off a purchase of a certain amount.  For instance.  $5/40 purchase.  At Publix, you can use this if you reach $40 total, before any coupons.

Say I bought 6 of the TP at once. $7.49 x 6 = $44.94 before tax/coupons.  They would apply the $5 off $40 to this total.  Making my total before coupons/tax $39.94.  Next I would use (6) of the $4/off purple flier coupons. Making the total $15.94.  Then they apply the (6) 65 cent off printable coupons I have. Making my total before tax $12.04.  Which, if you have a big family like myself, that's a pretty sweet deal!

There are other deals that I've done in the past, for example, in Florida we have true BOGO.  Meaning we buy one and the second one is free.  Other states may do it differently by charging half price for each item.  In Florida this works out well for us if we have a coupon that is also BOGO.  The coupon, plus the sale allow you to get the product for free if it's non taxed and for the cost of tax if it's obviously a taxed item.  If you just have a dollar off coupon.  You would be able to use (2) one for the item that you are purchasing and one for the free item.  An example was the cat treats I bought last week.  They were $1.79 regular price on sale last week, BOGO.  So right off the bat, I saved $1.79.  I had (2) $1.00 off coupons from the paper.  They give me $2 off the $1.79.  That's right!  I made money to take them home.  I applied to the rest of my groceries, but some people put this on a Publix gift card. 

This is just a quick/simple explanation to get your started on your couponing adventure. I know it sounds tedious and maybe boring.  I mean, it's couponing, right? There is a pretty good rush you get when you walk out of the door with enough to feed your family and you only spent $20.  Because you cut out little piece of paper!  But it's actually a serious hobby and if you misuse coupons purposely there are legal ramifications for that. Not to mention some of these couponers are pretty cut throat!  You just don't know what's hiding behind their mom demeanor!  Let me know if you have any questions or you have anything to add! 

A Ketogenic Lifestyle

For probably the last month I've been particularly stressed. It started in a personal area of my life with a distant friend. Before I knew it, it was seeping into my every day life, I was crying more. The weather hasn't been sunny and happy. So when it was time for derby evals, which I find stressful anyway, I let all that affect me. Which is not an excuse for poor performance, but it is not helping me to keep my cool. (I must have been not very humble in my past life, because this life is lesson after lesson in correcting that!) I decided to write about something I've been successful at and that's my diet.

In the past, I'd let all this stress become an excuse to eat whatever I wanted.  I'd totally derail my diet or any healthy habit I was trying to have. Right now, I'm not sure what I want to do. Maybe I'd like to skate or work out or something that would help me achieve the goal I have my eyes on. But honestly, I'm stuck on how exactly to fix it. So I guess I'll write and hopefully that will help.

This time last year, I had just gone back to skating after being off for 6 months from a derby injury and I was skating, and eating healthy (limiting calories and healthy grains, low fat) but I was gaining weight at an alarming rate. I was desperate to find something, so I started looking into gastric bypass surgery. I have a couple friends who were successful with this and I was thinking, "I've tried everything!". Well, my insurance doesn't cover it, so that didn't get off the ground very fast. I had a brilliant idea after watching My 600lb Life, I could attempt to eat what they were eating post surgery, they lost weight not from the surgery, but from what they were and weren't eating. Also the Doctor on the show seemed to push higher protein and lower carbohydrates in general. I looked up a "post-surgery sample diet" on bariatric doctor's website and followed that for a few days and was surprised to find that my cravings were diminished.

At the same time, I belonged to a group on Facebook. This group was all about eating a Low Carbohydrate, High Fat diet. I was just part of the group, lurking, at first. The ideas they were throwing around went against everything I ever considered in diet advice. If I was hanging onto 40%+ in body fat, then how exactly could I lose weight by eating 70% of my diet in fat? All conventional medicine has told us the exact opposite. My mother changed us to skim milk back when I was a kid. WIC taught me to give my kids skim milk, to reduce fat, after they were two years old. So I watched their posts and I was surprised by what I read. Not only were these people controlling their Type 2 Diabetes, lowering cholesterol and triglycerides, they were losing weight, they were having less inflammation, they weren't craving sugar. They were eating until they were full. To be honest, after a few days on a diet meant to accommodate a smaller amount of food from a decreased stomach size, I was ready to expand... figuratively. So I started off by just looking for low carb choices that were higher in fat. If I was hungry, I ate fat. After about 2 weeks, I stopped even being hungry. Especially since much of the time, I wasn't really hungry anyway. It was stress eating, combined with a blood glucose level that was slightly elevated from continuing to feed my cravings and stress with sugar. When you are constantly eating lots of carbs your blood glucose gets used to being a little on the high side, even if your insulin is working like it should. Your body starts wanting it to be higher. Then your insulin gets higher. Your body likes this, because it signals that there is a surplus and it's cashing in! It works harder to get you to eat more sugar (carbs). If only I could get my brain to think of money the same way! This way of eating is a way to get you to start "spending your fat" instead of saving it for retirement or a rainy day!

During the first week doing this, I lost 8 lbs. Yes, it was probably water. But 8 lbs of water that I don't really need. I could instantly feel a difference in my joints. I had just had surgery in my left knee just the August prior. I had been waking up daily with swollen, hurting fingers. I felt old. That day, with that water loss, no one else could see it, but I knew something was different. It made me keep going. After that, nearly every day for the next 2 weeks, I lost another pound (this doesn't happen for everyone, but I was 235 lbs and close to 50% bodyfat) I had lost 21 lbs by the 21st day of this diet. Then things started to slow down. 

I could see that I could do it. I started researching this diet more, I read The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. I read everything I could about it on Lyle McDonald's site. I joined a couple of other Facebook groups namely, ketogenic dieters and ketogains and I just took it all in. I started taking pictures of myself, and thought, "I'm never, ever sharing those!" (Ha!) and was able to see a change in myself. I continued to lose weight at a rate of about 5 lbs a month. 

It's actually easier to pick up on stress when you eat this way, because when I'm not stressed, the hunger signals are different. My body will alert me that I'm hungry, but I can easily put it off. When I am feeling stressed, I wander around trying to find something to ease my stress and try eating to ease that feeling. At first I really had to listen to my body, but now, I just know, if I feel like I need to pace and I'm opening the fridge, it's usually not hunger.

I started following the macros on the Ketogenic Dieter's page probably in May. A ketogenic diet is based off a percentage of fats (usually about 70%) and keeping carbs super low, but usually AT LEAST as low as 50 grams per day.  You'll find most people keep them around 20 grams. The KD group has their own macros that they use. Instead of eating 70% fat, they take into consideration that you have fat on your body that you are trying to use up instead of store. So my macros are more like 55% fat, 5% carbs and the rest protein. I aim for 120 grams a protein a day. My muscle mass has definitely gone up since I started this. This is common for people who are following the macros the way I do. I try to keep my carbs at 20 grams NET (this is total carbs listed - fiber count - erythritol, if it's an ingredient).

I know when I first started on this diet, I had some concerned friends who pointed out that your brain needs 50 grams of glucose a day. Which is totally true. What is also true that your body can make all glucose that it needs, whenever it is needed. Since I eat adequate protein, I've had no issues with muscle loss or anything of the sort, like I said, my muscle mass is increasing and I can feel muscle definition that I didn't have previously. 

To date, I've lost 77#. My asthma has been drastically decreased. My joints no longer feel like I'm 100 and I can get up off the floor like I don't have a small child on my back. I no longer feel like I need to eat when stressed out, which is allowing me to find different, healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. All those things are huge.  It didn't happen overnight.  There were times when I went several weeks with no loss what-so-ever. But I don't worry about it much. I just keep eating what I eat and over time, the scale moves in the right direction. I should add that at some point in this process that my thyroid wasn't working correctly either, but that's a whole blog post for another day. I lost about 30+ before that was figured out. I hope this answered some questions and I hope you all have a great day! 

One Year

I've started off 2016 74# pounds lighter than when I started 2015.  It's pretty cool.  I can't even begin to explain the benefits I've found from losing weight and changing my way of eating (diet).  The benefits range from the need for my asthma inhaler a lot less to an increase in self-esteem.

When I started off last year, I decided to make a change, not just in my diet, but in my thinking.  I decided to celebrate every pound I lost by posting publicly on Facebook.  I did this because, I thought it would help me stay on track.  I would be publicly holding myself accountable. That worked.  I didn't realize that so many of my friends and family (and even their friends and family!) would be watching.  I was prepared for some backlash and eye-rolling.  But you know what happened? No the backlash and eye-rolling!  I became an inspiration to myself.  Which in turn has inspired other people.  My Facebook posts may revolve around eating and losing weight (along with kids, derby, politics and things that amuse me!) but there is now a lack of the self-depreciating posts that I used to have, I didn't have a lot, but I had a lot more than I deserved. Humans mostly learn the best if they feel safe and loved.  For some reason our culture as a whole seems to teach us that we don't deserve to feel safe and loved from ourselves.  We apologize for being ourselves! Let me tell you, you're awesome and deserve to be your own biggest cheerleader!!  So if you are trying to learn a new derby skill or you are trying to start a new way of eating, you should be gentle with yourself. Expect that you are going to make mistakes. Expect that you will eventually figure it out. If you need help, don't be too proud to ask for it. Give yourself props for just trying. Each time you do this, your are reinforcing the positive part of learning.

I get posts in my inbox now, asking me how to get started, if a recipe will fit into macros and the best ones...thanking me for posting my progress and how they have seen a difference in themselves and how me publicly posting about my change of lifestyle has made a difference to them. 

On those days when I have on "fat goggles", those types of things inspire me back.  When someone posts that they lost 1 lb, I feel over the moon for them.  Because, I know first hand the struggle sometimes to lose just one stinking pound.  I know the tears and the depression I felt when I was doing everything that I had been taught in nutrition classes and it didn't help AND I WAS STARVING. 

I'm so happy that I decided to share my journey. I'm not sure if I would have been as successful had I not, if I would have continued to fear publicly failing (which is code for publicly learning). Thanks for being there for me!