Enjoying life in the wrong ways

I've been focusing more lately on making a deliberate effort to enjoy my life, mostly due to the fact that my very young step-sister-in-law is dying. She's not just dying, but she's dying a slow, agonizing, torturous death. She's spent the past year inside, away from the world, not able to eat or do much of anything at all. She has three daughters and is only one year older than I am.

So needless to say, it's been on my mind a lot lately. Not only her death, but on my life, and the fact that there are times when I don't really even try to enjoy it. Overall, this is a good thing to reflect on, mainly because it's caused me to step out lately and do things that I may not have without being purposely mindful of it...but it occurred to me today that it is also effecting me in bad ways.

Namely, my eating.

I have been more of the mindset lately to ENJOY my food, relax about what I eat, to just be in the moment...and as a result I am still gaining. I did a peek weigh-in this morning and I am at 130 again. Let me tell you, that just sucks. After maintaining for a year and a half, I am now officially completely off the rails! There is a part of me that feels completely capable of getting back into the groove and dropping ten pounds in no time, but there is also a part of me that just wants to stop thinking about it and enjoy my life (and food) for what it is.

Oh, I know. I could eat healthy and still enjoy life, right? I suppose so, but if I'm being totally honest...it feels like no. I'm serious! To ME (and me alone) enjoying my food means not worrying about what it is, how many calories, if it's too fatty or too salty, it's just enjoying the tastes and textures and indulging whenever I please. Cake, ice cream, chips, pizza, pasta, ooey-gooey mac and cheese...well, you know.

Yes, this is an extremely immature, childish way of looking at it. I am aware. I am also aware I could just make up my mind to enjoy these things in moderation, as I've done for the past two years. Yep. I could do it. And I should. But if I'm honest? I just DO. NOT. WANT. TO.

There is a lot more to me gaining weight than this enjoying food thing, by the way. I am in a bit of a down cycle and that makes me eat more, to be sure. I've also been feeling really yucky physically lately and that always drives me to eat (a weird, psychological quirk of mine) but this enjoying life thing is just what was on my mind today. Trying to enjoy my life to the fullest, even when it comes to my eating, and how it is really biting me on my (ever-expanding) butt.

My plan? Well, for one I need to reign in this child in me who is demanding cake and chips 24/7, to start! I am finally going to the grocery store tomorrow to re-stock on good stuff, and that is key. I'm hoping to force my lazy butt onto the treadmill most days next week, even if it's only for a wimpy walk. Up my water. Try to be more active during the day.

(Side note: I'm totally sucked into the Casey Anthony trial. It's streamed live online and it sucks me in every single day! Doesn't do much to encourage daytime activity, let me tell you!)

Sorry that I'm sucking so badly lately and my posts are pathetic, weak, and whiny. I want to be as honest as possible with you all, and it's just not always pretty, know what I mean? Hope you're all enjoying the holiday weekend! :)

On my mind

Just a couple of things on my mind today:

*Being a parent is HARD and getting harder with each passing year. Trying to balance consequences for behavior with my daughter's happiness is a never-ending internal battle for me! I was just so unhappy as a child, and because of that I tend to put too much emphasis on her happiness above all else. Now that she is getting older, I'm realizing that she needs discipline now more than ever, and quite frankly it stinks. How I miss the younger years, when everything was so much simpler!

*The upward trend of my weight continues. I can NOT seem to find my groove again no matter how much I determine to do so. I so need to restock the house with good choices and purge out the bad ones...and find a way to get rid of my constantly ravenous appetite!

*Today I was once again reminded that life, even with God in control, is always going to be a mixture of joy and pain. Always. Pain is not ever going to be out of the picture, and running from it, trying to avoid it, is not an option. God will walk me through the pain but He will not be a magical protection from it, no matter what any fancy tv preacher tries to pass off as truth.

Enough for now...more later. Hoping you're all safe from the storms that are already firing up across the country once again. They have to stop eventually, right??

Checking in

I have been trying to blog, really I have. I have a ton of drafts that haven't made the cut for various reasons, mostly because I'm afraid of sharing too much of my darkness here. Oh, I know I've shared a bit in the past, but I'm just feeling weird about it these days, for whatever reason.

Bullet points on me lately:

*Lonely. Sometimes it sucks not having any friends. At least, no friends within the 'Hey, let's go get a coffee' range.

*Hormonal. For more days per month than not. Literally, I get maybe a week's relief each month, and this month has been a particularly bad one.

*Undisciplined. Not exercising enough. Eating far too much. Not doing my Bible studies. Not staying on top of laundry. Blah, blah, blah.

*Stressed. About my daughter and her schooling future, mostly. We start 8th grade next year, and I'm at the point where I feel incapable of teaching her. Our school district is NOT acceptable. Looking into options is scary, because we have no clear feeling on which way to go from here. I spend WAY too much time worrying about this lately.

I could go on, but that's enough for now. I have so much I wish I could say (hence the many unpublished blog posts I've written!) but maybe it's all for another time. Hopefully the sun will come out soon (it has been raining almost non-stop here for the past two months...no kidding) and once that happens perhaps I'll bounce back!

I truly hope you are all doing well and having a wonderful spring...

Moving along...

So, I have kinda, sorta, in a way, partially pulled it together. A bit. :)

That sounds super wimpy, but it's all I've got right now so I'm hanging on with both hands to the little accomplishments. My biggest struggle these days seems to be portion control, and I'm still having a hard time with that. Last night I made chicken enchiladas for dinner, which sounds diet-bad but I make them relatively low-cal. I had a nice salad on the side and a reasonable portion of mexican rice. All in all, not too shabby...until I caved and had a second enchilada. And then half of a third. And a ton of chips and salsa.

SIGH.

But, I didn't eat anything after dinner, so there's a small victory. One thing I've decided is to give up jelly beans for the entire month of May. (Side note: I have become seriously addicted to Jelly Belly beans. Like, going to Anderson's to get a big bag of bulk Jelly Belly's at least once a week for the past few weeks, and then eating them all within 24 hours. It's a sad but delicious addiction that is NOT helping.)

So my husband thinks he's temporarily fixed the treadmill...at least good enough for me to use it without using the incline feature that I've been loving lately...so later today I'm going to do a nice run/walk. Just the thought of working out again gives me hope that I'll be able to jump back where I need to be soon. My goal for May is the same as it was for April, getting back under the magic number of 125 again...and then hopefully this summer I'll be able to finally reach my ultimate goal of 120, but we'll see. One thing at a time, Missy. One thing at a time. :)

Side note number two: getting back in the groove is so much harder than just living in the groove. Why can't I just stop being so stubborn and insisting on eating junk like a spoiled child? And why oh why must bad food taste sooooo good? WHY CAN'T BROCCOLI TASTE LIKE ICE CREAM?!?! We can put a man on the moon, but we can't make veggies chocolate flavored? ;-)

Weigh in day

128.2
Need I even say more?
Now you know why I have been avoiding the blog.
My treadmill is broken again and it will NOT stop raining. (Not making excuses...the gain is from eating junk, trust me. Just venting.)
UGH. I must get it together again, or I am in big trouble.

The week so far

It has been a very odd week around here, let me tell you. Spring break from school (which we are fully embracing, for once) and an oral surgery for my daughter have completely disrupted our regular schedule. It is both nice and oddly disconcerting, but I am trying desperately to just go with the flow.

Monday was a complete nothing day. The weather was terribly gray and rainy, so we had us a movie marathon day! I managed to do a few loads of laundry in between dvds, and that was that. :)

Tuesday was a bit nicer, although it still hasn't warmed up to spring level temperatures quite yet, so we decided to get out of the house. My daughter went to her weekly art class and then we decided to stock up on books and movies at the library for the inevitable days on the sofa that Wednesdays surgery would bring. We also spent some time at Panera for coffee and cocoa (and maybe a brownie to share), then we were off to TJ Maxx for Easter dress shopping. We did find one but after seeing it on her that evening with shoes, her daddy and I think it might just be on the short side. (She is all legs, that daughter of mine, and it makes most dresses seem so short!)

Wednesday morning was the surgery, which we decided earlier in the week should be called a 'procedure' because it is much less intimidating. Our princess has had braces for the past year and a half, and this surgery is part of that whole process, exposing and attaching chains to some teeth that need pulled forward. They didn't have to completely knock her out (although she'd have much preferred that, honestly!) but it was apparently quite the ordeal, with them almost having to rip apart the entire roof of her mouth! In the end, they sent her home with a mouthful of gauze and a prescription for Vicadin.

Poor baby was a mess for a few hours, but God blessed her with very little pain as the day progressed. We ended up only giving her Tylenol (I didn't want to drug my 12 year old on narcotics unless absolutely necessary!) and she did just fine. So far this morning, she hasn't even needed the Tylenol at all! She is a trooper, that's for sure. She's even eating lots of soft foods: mashed up peas, mashed up mac and cheese, yogurt, ice cream, scrambled eggs, and oatmeal. It does this mama's heart good to see her with a good appetite so soon!

And that brings us to today. So far, we are watching Anne of Green Gables (the kiddo just finished the book a couple of weeks ago and she loved it, just like her mama!) and lounging around in our pajamas. I will most likely get some housework accomplished at some point today, I am sure, but for now I am just taking it easy. I'm hoping that the kiddo is up for more by tomorrow, it is her spring break after all!

As for diet/exercising, well, lets avoid that subject, shall we? I'll just say that this week has been super stressful for this anxiety-prone mama (haha, understatement of the year!) and my eating has certainly reflected that, without a doubt! :)

At any rate, I hope that you are all having a wonderful week and at least some of you enjoying some wonderful spring weather!

Monthly weigh in

Weight this morning: 125.2

Okay, so the damage isn't quite as bad as I thought, but I still need to get back to healthier eating again. I've already started, doing pretty well for the past three days or so, and hopefully I can keep it up. There is just no excuse for eating all the junk that I've been letting myself eat ALL THE TIME. I can (and should) do better.

So there you have it. Happy April everyone! Maybe now spring will finally decide to show itself? :)

Going the wrong way

There are times when I don't blog for a few days simply because it doesn't occur to me. There are also times when I'm struggling with a particularly hard personal struggle or a down cycle in my depression and I don't feel 'up' to blogging, so it goes quiet over here for awhile. Sometimes, I just have nothing to say at all, which is just so hard to believe, what with my ever-so-exciting life and all, so I don't blog.

Then there are times (like now, for instance) when basically I'm hiding from you all a bit. See, whether you've accepted the job or not, you are sort of my accountability partners, the ones who cheered me on to losing the weight, and celebrated the year plus that I've keep it off. The ones who remind me why I'm doing it, who give me helpful hints and pats on the back. The ones who I didn't want to know that I am NOT doing a good job of keeping that weight off now. At all.

I am not even going to try and sugar coat it for you. I am most definitely failing right now. My weight is up, probably back over 130 right now, but really I have no idea, because I am completely avoiding the scale. Me, the super obsessive weighing-in-er, not curious to peek and know how bad it is. Oh, I already know it's bad...and the sad thing is, I don't really know if I'm ready to start tackling it again.

Here is the thing: I know what to do. It isn't even really that hard to do it. I'm just choosing not to do it. WHY?!? Why am I sabotaging this after all these months? Almost exactly two years ago (April 3rd) I started this journey and I worked so hard, I became a person I didn't even think I could be, and I eventually accomplished my goal. In my life, to me, this was huge. What has happened to change that?

I'm eating whatever I want, whenever I want, like a spoiled child. Maybe I'm tired of 'missing out' or denying myself. I don't know. Food just tastes good and I want it. Honestly, it doesn't really have to be deep...I like food, I love to eat! I like ice cream and chips and big plates of comfort food. I want pizza and Chinese food and huge bowls of pasta salad. I don't want fruit, veggies, eggs, and yogurt anymore. I want salty, sweet, ooey-gooey junkiness.

My workouts are still happening for the most part, except that I've missed the last couple of days due to some serious PMS...which could also be effecting the rest of this, to be honest, but then again I made it through almost two years of PMS without gaining more than a pound or two and only for a few days, so that's just not a good enough excuse. There IS no excuse.

I AM GAINING THE WEIGHT BACK. There. I had to say it. I had to acknowledge it, confess it, something. I am going in the wrong direction and have been for a couple of months now. It is happening and it will continue to happen unless I can get a grip and control myself.

In a few days it will be weigh-in day and we will know how bad the damage is. Hopefully, by then I will be ready to start the hard work to get back to my goal weight. I have to be ready, because retreat can't be an option. I must keep trying, because in the end, I believe it is worth it.

Unexpected blessings

I love to read. It is something I sometimes forget, going through seasons where I don't pick up a book for weeks, only to find a great book and then proceed to go from one book to another for weeks on end. One of the worst things about being on an extremely tight budget is that I can't just go out and buy books. Even though most only cost between $10 to $25, that would take away from a grocery budget that I'm already stressed out over, know what I mean?

I actually have an (ever-growing) list of around 40 books right now that I want to read. The first thing I do is check the library, and sometimes I do get lucky and they have what I want, but they aren't too keen on stocking a ton of Christian books so most of the time I strike out with those. I've actually started reading a bunch of Amish-set fiction books, because oddly they have a huge selection of those...

Anyway, there are a couple of different books that are very popular online right now and oh, how I wanted them but I knew I must be patient and wait until I had a bit of extra money to buy them. Sigh. I would read blog post after blog post of people saying how wonderful and life-changing these books are...and each time I would have to remind myself that I would read them too, in time. There, of course, were plenty of giveaways, and trust me when I say I entered every single one I found! Never did I win anything though...

Until last week! Yes, I won a blog giveaway for one of the exact books (A Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp) I was waiting for! I know it sounds crazy weird, but it felt like a kiss on the cheek from God. :) Thank you so much to an old blog friend, Katie, who held the giveaway over at her blog, Boasting in my Weakness.

But guess what? It doesn't stop there! My friend Shauna had emailed me recently about a great book on spirituality and dieting she was reading called Made to Crave by Lysa Terkeurst...and little did she know, that was one of the books on my list! She said that I could borrow it when she was done and I was just so tickled that she would do that for me, especially since we don't even live in the same state!

Then yesterday, the very same day I got the other book from Katie, I got it a package in the mail from Shauna and in it sat the book! I didn't even know she was sending it yet, I thought it would be some day in the distant future or whatever. What a blessing! I was just beside myself, two of the books I was sooo wanting to read and forcing myself to be patient for, all of a sudden there I was holding them both in my hands. Just really, really cool.

So Katie and Shauna, I just wanted to take a second to tell you that God used you both in a big way to show me that He truly does care about the small stuff in my life. If I can learn to wait on Him and do things His way, He simply has it covered. I really needed to see a glimpse of Him at work, and I truly believe that this week I did. Amazing. :)

Recieving grace

There are a few blogs that I read that I tend to let stack up in my google reader, sometimes as many as 45-50 deep. It isn't because they are the ones I don't care about, quite the opposite actually. They are the ones that I need to slow down and really focus on...and I often put them off because I never feel like I'm in the right state of mind to do that these days.

One of them is Ann Voskamp's blog, A Holy Experience.

If you don't read her blog, please, trust me, start. I won't even try to describe it, other than to say I believe God has truly given her a gift. So anyway, I finally start tackling some old blog posts of hers in my reader and one had a short, simple line tucked inside that I can't seem to get out of my head. She said, "For the life of me? I can’t get it all right."

And immediately tears filled my eyes, because yes...that is exactly it. For the life of me I can't get it all right. Truthfully, it is often the last thought that runs through my head at night. 'Why can't I ever get it right? Just for one day? Why am I so weak? What is wrong with me?'

And then I read that Ann, who is easily one of the online women I look 'up' to the most, sometimes feels the same way...and I am slightly comforted, slightly encouraged.

What does Ann say later in her post about this condition? She says: "The art of celebrating life isn’t about getting it right — but about receiving Grace."

Grace. I once read a really good book about it (What's so amazing about grace?) and it was such a life-changing thing. For about a week. Ugh. I have a terrible tendency to quickly lose any revelation I receive! I've actually been meaning to re-read the book, but there are like five more I'm already reading right now that I can't seem to finish...

Anyway, when I think of grace I tend to think of it in terms of me extending grace to others, because it is an area that I struggle with constantly. (Side note: Is there an area in which I don't struggle?!? See what I mean about not getting anything right?) The thought of my need for grace from God is much harder for me, because I know beyond any doubt that I do NOT deserve it. I don't deserve His forgiveness because I continually commit the same sins over and over again. I don't deserve His mercy because I so rarely grant mercy to others. I don't deserve His grace because I am a never-ending, never-changing mess. And on and on it goes.

Oh for goodness sakes, I don't even know what my point is! I guess it is just that every once in a while I get a momentary glimpse of the fact that we're all our own special kind of mess. Some just do a better job hiding their mess, I suppose. I think that most people have a much smaller mess to hide, lucky for them, and then there is me, who is basically a head-to-toe, can't-hide-it-even-if-I-wanted-to kind of mess. My only hope, your only hope, is God. Now, if only I could let that revelation move me toward Him, inspire me to seek Him, woo me to love Him. Please Lord, let me get at least this right.