Note to self

So I can't figure out why I sabotage myself so often! Today was going great...brisk 1.4 mile walk in the park with hubby bright and early, low-cal breakfast sandwich for breakfast, remembered my b-complex, went to Subway for lunch and though I was SOOOO tempted by the yummy chocolate-chocolate chip cookies I resisted.

I was feeling on top of it!

Get home with my food and even decided to only eat half my sub and half of my baked chips, and save the rest for a couple of hours later. But then I didn't. And I scarfed it all in like five minutes. Oh, and I also gobbled down a 100 calorie pack of cookies for no apparent reason. Probably about six hundred freaking calories in 15 minutes. And I have zero clues why.

Seriously, WHY?! 

I am now feeling so gross and full. Like, I wish I hadn't have eaten at all. I am taking the time to type this out right now because one day I'll read back over this and I want to tell my future self that IT IS NOT WORTH IT. I feel emotionally sick, physically sick, and just plain disappointed in myself.

So the plan is to not snack today or just grab a yogurt or carrots if i get desperate, cook a healthy-ish dinner (chicken fajitas I think) and for heavens sake use a bit of portion control while eating it, and get another walk/run in of at least a mile, maybe even a mile and a half.

Oh, and do some laundry, which is totally exercise. 

Keep trying, right? Sigh. Keep on trying.   

*Edited to add: I did it! I walked/ran on the treadmill an additional 1.6 miles for a total of 3 miles today. Phew. I feel so much better, not going to lie. :)

Saturday morning weigh in

Weight today: 139 
Gain of almost 2 pounds. 

I am frustrated with myself beyond belief. Why can't I just buckle down and do this already?! My biggest and closest-to-legit excuse is that I'm stinking exhausted. School started a few weeks ago for my daughter and suddenly I'm up at 6:00 (or earlier) now and let me tell you...it's taking a toll. I don't fall asleep easily EVER no matter how tired I am, and I'm averaging only 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night, often even less than that. Occasionally I'll take a quick nap during the day, but usually not because it ends up making me feel gross, so I'm walking around in a daze like a stinking zombie. Exercise? Yeah, highly unlikely when I can barely function or keep my eyes open. Eating right? Nope, lets order a pizza again for dinner, or here let me grab these m&m's at 3:00 just for the sugar rush to be able to go pick her up from school, and etc. 

Now, all of that being said, I completely acknowledge that it's all just a bunch of lame excuses. I know that I COULD do this if I really tried, but I am simply NOT TRYING. I am choosing to let my circumstances get the best of me. Here's the thing: I have a big event I want to look good for in less than a month, and now I have no time to get back down to a weight I'm more comfortable at, so it is time to just buckle down and do something. Even five or six pounds lost by then would make a difference in the tight-ish dress that I have to wear that day. So...onward I must go. Somehow I have to find it in me to care more, to be more consistent, to make a focused effort. Somehow.

Updates

So, there is a reason I didn't weigh in on Saturday and it isn't that I forgot. I remembered, but I just couldn't face what would surely be waiting for me: a big, fat gain. I'm sorry to say that I will probably not be weighing in again this weekend. I can't even pretend there's a chance for a loss, or even a chance of maintaining where I was. I've been terrible, and I mean AWFUL, with my eating and I've blown off the majority of workouts that I was supposed to do for the past couple of weeks. 

FAIL.

I'm so unbelievably stressed out about various things and then I treat food as an escape. Something I can control, even if everything else is OUT of control. I respond to stress in the worst way: by hiding at home and pigging out on junk.Trying not to think, I will lose myself in a book or on the internet or by watching a series on Netflix. And I'll be eating the whole time. 

Through all of this I hurt. Physically, I mean. Cramps...horrible, terrible, painful uterine cramps plague me for weeks every single month. They begin a couple of days before ovulation and continue for pretty much the entire two weeks (or more) until my period and then into my period. So, pain for approximately 18-20 days a month. This has been the norm for me for 2 or 3 years now and I am sadly pretty much used to it, but it still really, really sucks. My heating pad is my constant companion. I sleep with it, eat with it, watch tv with it, and I've even thought of taking it on car rides with me! So...I tend to use this as an excuse to not work out. Most days I could probably work through the pain, and some days I do, but truthfully I usually don't. I just let myself be defeated by it, like I do most things in my life. 

Obviously, I'm whiny today and I'm sorry. I'm cranky and lonely and stressed and I've been feeling way too crampy and yucky for way too many days in a row. I'm also feeling very emotionally adrift because of the spiritual stuff...stuff I'd planned to work out here but I'm finding that probably isn't a great idea. There's just no way to say the things I am thinking and feeling without seriously hurting those of you who are religious, and I do NOT want to do that. I will only say that I do know I still believe in God, if only because of the intense anger I often feel towards him. That sounds terrible, but it is sometimes the only comfort I feel about the whole thing. If I can keep believing in HIM, despite my feelings towards Christianity/religion and the bible, that is at least SOMETHING.

No matter how badly I want to say more, like all of the how's and why's of my drastic change of thinking, I won't out of respect for those who still hold those things dearly, and who may read my words and be disheartened. Just know that it is a HUGE part of my life right now, this spiritual struggle, and it isn't something I take lightly. It is a violent stripping away of something I don't necessarily WANT to lose. I just don't know how to force myself to continue on without it being a lie, and that would seriously defeat the purpose, yes? 

Anyway, there's an update of what's going on in my life right now. Basically, a big mess but what can I say...I'm used to it. ;-)   

Saturday morning weigh in

Well, today I weighed in at 137.3, so I didn't lose anything and I'm even up a tenth of a pound. Boooo.

I have a few semi-valid excuses I could throw down, but I won't. When it comes right down to it, I only worked out three times this past week and I had way too many bad meals, those things are my fault and I own it.

So, here's to another week of trying to do better. My daughter goes back to school on Tuesday, so we'll see if that HELPS my cause or HURTS it. (It's very stressful for me, so hurting it is entirely possible!) Oh, and this week is the worst of my PMS for the month, so good times. (not) I'll try not to eat myself into a coma and do SOMETHING, no matter how small, to get a workout everyday and see if it helps.   

Saturday morning weigh in

Weight this morning: 137.2
Weight last week: 143
Lost 5.8 pounds! :)

So excited about this. I know it gets harder from here, but I'm just glad that the efforts of this past week added up to something, or I'd have maybe given up. Hoping to lose another two pounds this upcoming week. 

Saturday norning weigh-in

Decided to weigh in on a whim this morning. 143. Yikes. That is a full TWENTY pounds up from my lowest! 

Time to get serious. I am actually ashamed of how I let it get this bad. Eating peanut m&ms again (a lot!), cupcakes, chips, Doritos, YOU NAME IT. It is shameful. I have been very spotty with working out, too. I'm in a wicked down cycle and it's showing in my weight, for sure. 

So frustrated with myself.

Church yesterday

Well, I decided to go to church yesterday for the first time in a few weeks. BIG mistake. I just ended up having this running dialog in my head, countering some of what is being preached and remembering Bible verses that countered others he mentioned, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't turn it off.

The biggest question here for me is: Should I even be trying to turn it off? 

Here's the thing. One of the lessons I've been taught as a Christian is to silence doubt. Not to question anything in the Bible. That the questions in my head are no doubt put there by the devil, so to entertain them is wrong. Just go to the Bible for 'truth' and replace all doubt with faith.

Only...that isn't sitting right with me anymore. (Did it ever? I don't know.) What I do know is that constantly shutting down my own thoughts and feelings has become what feels like self-brainwashing. Constantly going against what FEELS right for what I'm TOLD is right feels wrong. I feel like I'm having to choose between being true to myself or being true to God, and I know I'm supposed to choose Him, but why does that feel so wrong?

So anyway, about halfway through the sermon he hit a note that was just one too far for me to handle so I went out to the car and proceeded to have a chat with God. Not that I got any answers, mind you. I never do. Then I tried not to make a big deal out of it to my family, but of course eventually I ended up making comments to both of them separately, and they both got mad at me. Sigh.

I just don't want my daughter to be PROGRAMMED. I want her to CHOOSE this, if it's what she wants, but also to be fully informed. I also want her to be strong enough to question what she's taught, to weigh it within herself, to not just regurgitate what she hears from other people. To not only HAVE a belief, but to be able to articulate why she believes it, and able to defend it with more than just 'that's what I was taught' or whatever. Not to swallow every word that is ever served to her, but to examine both herself and the word and decide what she finds palatable. 

But. To say these things to her sounds like I'm trying to program her to MY way of thinking, and that's wrong, too. So what to do? I don't know. I do know that I'm going to just have to shut up about it though. I don't want to upset her, or take away her faith. And my husband is over it, too. He is frustrated with me, to say the least. 

So I guess I'll try to keep my thoughts to myself, or put them here. In the meantime, I have to decide what to do about attending church. I wanted to go in the name of family unity, but it might end up doing more harm than good.

introduction to my doubt

To start I'll say that I am pretty much all the way over into agnostic territory these days. I still believe that there is a God and I'm holding onto that belief with both hands. However, I honestly don't think I can be considered a Christian any longer. It's not that I don't believe in Jesus, I'm just not sure what He did or for whom, but what I do know is that I pretty much don't believe in the bible itself anymore...and can you really be a Christian if you don't follow the Bible?

I could go on and on about why and one day maybe I will, but mostly I'll just say that I no longer believe the 'divine inspiration, infallible word of God' aspect of the bible. I now believe it was written by very infallible men and then translated over and over by very infallible (and perhaps even corrupt) men with political and cultural agenda

(And don't even get me started on how I think many churches ACT like they feel the same way...picking and choosing what to follow and what to throw out. Another post for another time, perhaps!)
 
As for the gospel and Jesus, as much as it pains me to say this: I don't know. I just don't.  I WANT to know and believe, I'm just not sure. Right now there is very little ground under my feet (do you know what i mean by that?) and I haven't been able to get my head around Jesus and who I think he was or what I think he did quite yet.

What I do believe is that God, in whatever form He exists, HAS GOT TO BE far, far bigger than any religion could possibly begin to conceive or imagine. Once I allowed myself to openly study different aspects of the universe, it became clearer that Christianity's version of God (or ANY earthly religion's view of him) is tiny. Small. Earth focused. Very rigid and very, very limited by our own constructed religion and beliefs. I feel like we've created our version of God BASED on what the Bible says, instead of allowing Him to be whatever He is based on WHAT HE ACTUALLY IS. 

At any rate, a lot has changed within me, or maybe its just that I've finally admitted what has always been there, just beneath the surface. Many people would probably say that I must have never been saved in the first place, and maybe they are right. Truth be told, I've been a doubter since early childhood, always asking my mom questions on how we could possibly know our way was the right way and all the others had it wrong. So, maybe I never truly committed myself to Christianity, I don't know. I know that I truly felt like I did. I sincerely tried. I cried out to God repeatedly in desperation to know Him, to find Him, for the faith to believe more times than I can count. I've lain face-down on my bedroom floor crying out to Him over and over again. I've participated in Bible study after Bible study, read book after book, fasted and prayed, gone to church for years. Yet, here I am, filled with more doubt than faith.

Those who believe in predestination would say I am just not one of the elect. Honestly, if the Bible really is true then I can actually buy into this one. I just don't get it as easily and naturally as the Christians I see around me. I can't just embrace faith and shut off the questions and doubts. Never have been able to do that, no matter how hard I tried. So...maybe I just wasn't chosen by God to be saved. I don't know.

What I do know is that I can't pretend anymore and I can't simply silence what is screaming inside of me to get out any longer. And PLEASE know that this isn't something I take lightly. I have struggled and wrestled and mentally beaten myself bloody trying to hold onto my faith. I WANT to believe. I've begged and pleaded with God time and time again to give me the faith to believe. I WANT to just keep going and ignore this. I WANT to make things simpler and just fall back into the patterns of my faith. 

I just don't know how. 
 

Warning...

So, here's the deal. I want to have a place to write about the religious angsty stuff going on with me and I've wanted to be able to freely do it here, but didn't want to offend anyone. I've kept it all inside for so long that I feel like I'm going to BURST and desperately need to let it OUT. So, I just tried for like an hour to figure out how to make a separate page here so that you can only read the religious stuff if you want to, but apparently blogger stinks and it isn't that easy. SO. I'm just going to do it here and ask that you go easy on me. Also, I DO NOT want to upset anyone by what I say, or have my words make anyone else start to struggle in their own faith. This is a horrible thing that I am going through and the LAST thing I ever want to do it drag someone else down with me. If you need to stop reading here, I totally understand.

I guess that is a disclaimer for whatever is to follow. 

You've been warned. ;-)

(Of course if the past is any indicator of future behavior I'll probably not post here for another two or three months, so yeah. Whatever.) 

:)
 

Saturday morning weigh in

135.
Yes, I'm frustrated.
Yes, I could be trying harder, it is my own fault.
Here's to a better week...