{{{{Anya}}}}}

Oh dear heart, I can feel your pain through my computer screen, and I applaud you for sharing your heart with us.

My fiance is an emotional eater and when she feels (what's that acronym...HAuLT...hurt, angry, lonely, tired) she gravitates toward food as her source of comfort. She has come SO far, but I can sense when she is struggling and it takes all my will power to not jump in and try to rescue her. That sort of co-dependent behavior can be such a trigger for me. I don't have food issues so much anymore, but when my switches get flipped (HAuLT) I turn to wine. <sigh> I love it so, but I scared myself a while back when taking out the recycling and I saw how many empty bottles of red wine were there. It just takes practice. And lots of love and self forgiveness. We MUST be gentle with ourselves. Read my signature and don't forget it!!! You are so beautiful and strong and smart and wonderful and we won't ever stop caring about you! No matter what! That's what this beautiful community is all about!!! (f)

I could have easily written this, many times over.

LDR's are super hard, combined with all the other stuff going on (read: life).

It will get better, promise!

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned it but the low calorie and high protein causes the body to go into a state of ketosis... One benefit/side effect is that the person doesn't feel hunger.

I understand the thinking that '500' calories daily is dangerous but the doctors that have signed off on these diets (optifast is one I've done, personally) consider the pros and cons of a person remaining at a certain weight vs. the low-risk factors associated with a short-term, low-calorie 'fast' and the benefits outweigh the risks for a person who is morbidly obese. (Not all are morbidly obese, I know Kaiser (HMO) will allow you to 'fast' if you have even just 40 lbs to lose.)

The (only) downside is keeping off weight shed so quickly--Which is real, real hard.

((((( Anya )))))

Emotional eating is really, really hard...and I hear you completely on this. One of the biggest challenges I have is to not go to the sweets or chips if I'm feeling stressed or depressed.

I also know how hard LDRs can be... :rrose:

I happen to LOVE Novela's sig line, because it is so true. Sometimes courage truly is acknowledging what happened (to yourself), stepping on the scale to face reality, NOT beating yourself up about it, and starting again tomorrow.

You are a perfectly imperfect human being....complete with feelings. And some days or weeks are going to be harder than others. It's okay. You aren't off track at all....just experiencing a course correction. :)

A friend once told me that we have to think of progress like a sail boat. Sail boats, because they depend on wind and not motors, don't travel in straight lines from start point to end. They tack back and forth with the wind....crossing back and forth over the line that runs from their beginning to their destination...over and over again. In essence, they are almost always "off course"....but a talented sailor, who respects the nature of sailboats and the wind, will still end up where they are going.

You're not failing...you're just tacking with the wind...and need to turn your sails around.

Big hugs. :stillheart:

Those aren't fake ass--It's you trying at something that for right now, just isn't working.

(((((( PinkieLee ))))))

And what I said to Anya also applies to you lovely lady.

You have just gone through one of the toughest things there is...and you are not a failure for being human, for being emotional, for being sad, and for trying to make yourself feel better.

Sometimes I think we need to reframe it.

Let me tell you a true story.

The company I work for is a health provider...not a doctor or a hospital. We create and provide wellness solutions...like fitness, smoking cessation, health coaching, etc.

One of our health coaches posted on our intranet some months back about a major victory. The entire company recognized it and celebrated it. Guess what it was?

A client, who had Type 2 diabetes and several other chronic conditions, had finally agreed to work with one of our coaches. The goal they set was to try to reduce his consumption of unhealthy sweets. This client had the practice of going every day to Dairy Queen and getting a large Blizzard....that yummy soft ice cream and crushed up cookies or candy thing that I also love.

The success?

The client had changed their practice...and was now going only twice a week and getting a small Blizzard.

That's worth celebrating....because it is a success, not a failure.

So....instead of counting the day a failure if you eat more than you planned....what about counting each small success? What if you focus on the single instance when you wanted ice cream and had something healthy instead? Or took a hot bath? Or read a book to distract yourself?

Sometimes our victories may only last a few minutes....but we need to focus on them, and strive for more of them....not be hard on ourselves for the times we stumble.

:stillheart:

Well hot damn bois and grrrls :cheesy:

All this talk of LDRs and emotional eating got me thinking...

I have done a lot of emotional eating in the last couple years....first from stress of the LDR, then the stress of moving, then the stress of life, etc. No one's "fault" but my own....it's how I cope when I can't cope, right?

Anyway.

When I finally hit 229 I said "enough"....that's just not safe with the diabetes and all the other health stuff I need to be concerned about. I started changing how I ate, how often I moved, started this thread, re-started this thread... :)

I can see and feel the differences, my lab results are good....but there's always "the pants."

I have a goal pair I can't wear yet....those real (old numbers) size 18 Apple Bottom jeans....I'm close, but not yet.

But there are my "every day" jeans that I moved from NY and hung in the back of the closet. New (inflated....or is that deflated?) size 14 women's Wranglers. I hadn't even tried them on since I moved because I knew they'd be impossible.

But...after posting...I started wondering. Went and took my shower and, instead of the sundress I was going to toss on, went into the closet, took down my favorite pair, stepped in, pulled them up, buttoned, zipped....and didn't even have to hold my breath or suck in my stomach.

They fit. :cheesy:

The Gym
 

Possibly binge-triggery
 

Wow. Tons of amazing posts in here lately! I have been trying to catch up and wanted to respond to several things so forgive me if this is disjointed:

JoSchmooze - Welcome! I am glad you are doing something for yourself and support you in taking charge of your health! I know that traveling all the time can be incredibly stressful and hard on the body so I am very glad you are figuring out ways to make it more manageable. I have heard of the hcg diet but haven't done a lot of research on it. It sounds incredibly low calorie/carb. Best of luck to you, please let us know how it goes!

Anya - Girrrrrrl, do I ever feel you. Not only with the binging but with the LDR triggers. I remember back to when Jack and I were dating long distance. It was 18 months of roller coaster highs and crushing lows and always that crappy feeling of "when will I see you again" immediately after I flew home. Its a lot of work and it's expensive ( I took a second job to cover my exorbitant phone bills, travel costs, and to help save for the move and Jack kicked her business into high gear to do the same).
I think that kind of stress and feeling of longing is a huge trigger for some of us and can often lead (and did for me many times) to binging.
It really helped me to think about what the "pattern" of the relationship would be so that I could plan accordingly for the feelings. If I knew I was going to be moping and feeling shitty for 10 days after leaving Jack in California, I made sure I had a full schedule of 2nd job and going out with friends to fill my time so that I wasn't sitting around with the feelings. Might have been "escapist" of me but it was the tool that worked at the time rather than sitting with the feelings.

On binging, I'd like to say this: I am a lifelong binger and I will BE a binger for the rest of my life. I don't know if this will be the same for anyone else here but I have resigned myself to realizing that no amount of "work" I do or weight I lose is going to reset that part of my brain because I learned binging as a tool so early in my life that it's just part of my marrow.

Admitting that is not a failure to me.

When I accepted the behavior as something that is going to crop up from time to time when I am triggered in certain ways, I feel more power over it because then it's "just part of my stress reaction" and not an angry monster terrorizing me.

I might not ever binge again in my life and will celebrate that heartily but if I do binge again, I'm going to treat it like hitting a nail on the highway. You change the tire and keep going. By changing the tire, I mean that we gain awareness every time we binge. Pretty soon, we can see the nail on the highway coming and might be able to change lanes to avoid it.

Changing lanes might mean changing our routine, or checking in extra often with ourselves, or going to a support group, or etc. Different strokes for different folks.

I have had 5 binges in the last 9 months. And don't get me wrong, these were bad mothers that meant thousands of calories, lots of self-deprecation, and feeling like giving up. All of them lasted 3 days or more because when I talk about binging, I don't mean I overate at one meal, I mean that I went on a food rampage and ate exhaustively for days to the point of wanting to throw up (and sometimes doing so). This also meant that I got to repeat my cycle of binge, weigh, freak out because I gained however many pounds, rinse and repeat.
Because the cycle helps us *stay* in the cycle if that makes any sense.

We become swirling eddies of food addiction where we get to have our food and our self-loathing too.

Fuck. That. Shit.

The world feeds us enough bullshit so we have to do better for ourselves. That takes believing that we are worth the fight.

That shit is HARD.

Just wanted to give huge props to every single person in this thread (and to the folks who read and don't post). This is an amazing thread and has been an amazing source of inspiration and support.

Much MUCH love.

Hugs to you Kim! I have had two prior stress fractures in my right foot from previously overdoing it on a treadmill at a crazy incline and one stress fracture in my left foot when a large can of tomatoe sauce fell out of my pantry on my foot.

I was fortunate in that I did not have one in each foot at the same time. They can be quite painful.

They all took a long time to heal and will not be rushed! Water arobics is a really great idea for continuing exercise without impacting your fractures.

Best of luck and your advice to not ignore pain is quite wise. I did ignore my 1st one and it took twice as long to heal as my subsequent ones!

PS:

Thanks to all of you that PM'd me or left me comments, regarding my post of earlier today.

All of you are the very best. This is a wonderful thread with a truly caring community of folks. Hugs also to each of you for such wonderful support for not only me but for each other. (f)

Sylvie -
Definitely sounds like a tough week for you. I hope you get some down time. <3


Friday check in!

I went out last night with a group of friends from work to do Mexican food and karaoke. I had 2 huge margaritas that I'm sure were not the best of choices but I had "saved" a ton of calories yesterday knowing that I was going to have a drink or two.

Checked the scales this morning and I am squarely at 284 which is .4 lower than my lowest weight before I had my 5-pound backfire over the last month! WOOT!

Babysteps!

Clothes are definitely getting looser and feeling a lot more energetic.

Some days I have to remind myself of how far I've come because the weight loss is really slow compared to other people I know.

In the last year, I have quit smoking, gone completely off of soda of any type, significantly reduced the amount of processed food I eat, and also added a significant amount of exercise to my normal routine.

I am no longer on blood pressure medication, my knees no longer hurt, my blood pressure is a normal number, and I don't wake up aching every morning.

That's a Virginia Slim "You've come a long way baby" moment if I've ever seen it!