another page from my journal......

carimiller7391

It really helps me to share, so I hope no one minds these!!

After being back for 10 days, I feel more in control. I joined a challenge on MFP to lose 100lbs in 15 months.... which is a spin off of the 78lbs in 12 months here. Difference being 1.5 lbs a week for 15 months vs 1.5 lbs a week for a year. I've also found a young woman named Sherry. Sherry lives 10 minutes from me. Sherry offered to begin a walking routine with me after surgery. I so appreciated this... you just have no idea..... My 2- BFF's both saying walking with me is beyond them since they are smaller and walk faster. Sherry is also trying to go low carb and I have several low carb cookbooks that I'll be sharing with her.

In addition, I feel a lot stronger this week ans able to speak up when people are being rude to me. Be it comments, looks, giggles, stares..... whatever it is! I know I am better than their negativity. Regardless of my weight, I deserve to be treated with respect. I will no longer disrespect myself or allow others to do so. Regardless of how they attempt to disrespect me. NO MORE AT ALL!!!!!

KnitOrMiss

Definitely we don't mind! We love the sharing.

I'm so glad that your time away gave you that blessing of perspective and self...

I could never get into one of those challenges. It would do my head in. Maybe 15 inches in 15 months! I'm so much better with the inches than pounds. You're a stronger woman than me. But yes, looking forward to your surgery is awesome. And I'm so jealous! Having a friend that would walk with you is FABULOUS!. And I'm sorry, your 2 BFF's crapped out. I can walk slower and just enjoy the walk. I wouldn't want to walk too fast anyway, as it would depleted all my nutrients!!

And yay for sharing low carb. That's when it's the most fun.

And kudos to you for speaking up... That's such a hard place for most of us to find and get comfortable with. You;re SO AWESOME.

carimiller7391

Hey Carly..... I really don't think vacation gave me perspective. I honestly do not remember 99.9% of my vacation. Like I blacked out for a solid week or something. I know what you're thinking. NOT GOOD AT ALL.

I believe you could modify the challenge to lose 15 inches in 15 months. Although, I have complete faith that you would crush that in a few months time. Thanks for the compliment saying I am a stronger woman than you, but what you do not realize... I pull a lot of strength from you. From your caring words, your honesty, your faith in me. Believe it or not, Sherry is a young lady I met on here. We've texted, but haven't met yet. She actually offered to help me out after my back surgery. OMG. I was shockingly surprised. I'm going to hit her up and see if maybe we can start walking this week. I just feel so bad as I do walk slow. I'm not too sure if I can say they my 2-BFFs crapped out on me. Robyn is a Zumba instructor.. she works out for a living. She's never really been a walker. Even when she was heavy, she never really walked. After she had surgery, she jumped into Zumba head first. I'm proud of all she's accomplished, but sometimes could use her support and don't feel as though I have it. Nicole is my pencil thin BFF. She wears a size 4 and told me, "walking as slow as you do bothers my hip." She did offer to join the gym with me where we could both go at our own pace. Until my back is fixed, that's not happening.

I am looking forward to my back surgery. According to the surgeon and the NP, I will lose about 6% mobility in my back. It should not be very noticeable since the section of my back that needs surgery is right at my glut level. I'm having a full cage put in. My disc between L5 and S1 is gone. It's bone on bone. That's why I'm in sooo much pain. I'm having nuts and bolts in my back.......Supposedly, the space where the disc is suppose to be... will either have a cadaver bone or some type of material that will harden and form into he missing disc. I'm not to sure how all that works. According to the NP for the first 6 weeks after surgery I will be in massive amounts of pain. Then I go to physical therapy for the next 6-12 weeks depending on how I do. I have a very high pain threshold.... here's hoping it's high enough for this surgery. I am hoping that I haven't done permanent damage to the rest of me though. I compensate for the pain and numbness on the left side of my body. My right hip is very sore at this point. Not sure if it is back related or what. Sometime's I feel like I am just falling the freak apart. I know it has a LOT to do with the extra weight I'm carrying. I'm focused on getting it off now. Very focused.

I'm not sure if I deserve kudos yet for speaking up and defending myself. I'm just very tired of being put down, talked about or feeling used. I'm worth much more than a lot of what I've been through this past year.

KnitOrMiss

I don't think it is necessarily that our time away gives us perspective, but rather the break in thinking the same way we do day in and day out, that break really helps us see clearly. As for not remembering your vacation - you were manic BEFORE you went and therefore while you were there, you got sun-baked repeatedly, and you knocked your head around. While I agree it isn't good, the texts you sent me while you were there weren't scary in nature, so I can't see it having been that awful. And yes, it isn't good, but you had a lot of factors playing in there.

I just don't do well with challenges. Like they break me every time. Because instead of keeping on what works, I try to do everything to meet the challenge, which ends up screwing up what actually works, and then instead of improved health as my factors, I start using BS factors like the scale or measuring tape, or whatever!

Like right now, since I'm solidly back low carb, I haven't really lost weight, though I'm maintaining in a range for now, but I know with absolute certainty that I've lost inches and bloat and stuff, because I'm back comfortably in my smaller jeans and I'm shrinking out of my bras again. So if I let the scale rule my brain like a psychotic dictator, I'd be all upset by no progress, but having shrunk again? That's where it's at. Plus, I dropped my fasting insulin levels back down from 15 to 9 or so - IN SIX WEEKS! Thank goodness, because I didn't want to have to kick my own butt! But that also plays into the slower weight loss, because I need to crank that number back on down to get back to good fat losses again...

And again, that's all about perspective for me!

Woman, I maintain that we may be weak ourselves, but when we lean on each other and get inspired by and improved by our relationships with others, we become a frigging force to be reckoned with! Together we are exponentially stronger than any of us standing alone!!!!

And actually, walking slower can be better for you considering your difficulty absorbing micronutrients and all that. Walking really long times or fast can deplete your nutrients badly. And essentially make it so you need to take another full measure of meds! That's one of the things I took away most out of "The Micronutrient Miracle." When we sweat, we don't just use up our electrolytes, but our nutrients as well... So, that's why I'm working on the ZMT stuff - because I do sweat, some, but it's not like a HIIT workout would be, and it's not burning through all the stored stuffs like a long or super intense walk would be, so slow walking is FABULOUS for health. Cardiovascular health should be improved with short term intense stuff like the ZMT and 1S2F stuffs...

I hope that you and Sherry can become healthy achieving buddies! We all need that. And I'm sorry, but a teacher or advanced student who can't take time to slow it down and work at a different level, that's not a very good teacher. I don't understand how walking slowing hurts someone's hips, unless they have a muscle/tendon/ligament/bone issue that they compensate heavily for in faster movements. Seems like to me, I'd want to be healthier, more flexible and such at the slow pace before increasing, but I guess that's just me, you know, focus on proper form and that. Just about anyone can throw themselves into something willy nilly... I don't know what that attitude bothers me, but it does. Though I do hope you and Nicole can be gym buddies down the road.

You do know that folks that are taller often have extra vertebrae in their backs, for men over 6 food, women over like 5'10". And for those, nearly all of them have some form of misformed vertebrae or cushion/bone failure over the course of their lifetimes, right? So this could have been a pre-existing "because you're tall" crap. It might have not have every had anything to do with you being overweight. Like seriously.

Yeah, if you're like me, I have kind of a sway back, and apparently I've been walking wrong for over 20 years, so I'm having to work on readjusting how I walk (I tend to arch my back some when I walk, causing the bottom of my pelvis to tilt backward, when it should be rolling more forward, like almost a lower ab contraction. It's a bit part of my pelvic floor dysfunction, my pain in walking, ongoing back pain, etc., etc., etc. So it's not permanent stuff that I screwed up, but it's definitely slow going to adjust everything back to where it should be...and like all PT, it's never fun. LOL

And there is nothing quite like a slap in the face to really allow you to focus where you need to focus! And forgive me MFP, but HELLS TO THE YES, you deserve ALL THE DOGGONED PROPS IN THE UNIVERSE for speaking up for yourself. Women specifically, and obese women in particular, especially those of us who struggle with mental illness and physical limitations as well, we are taught to be seen and heard, that being timid is a virtue, than anger is manly and not feminine. Well, F THAT SH!+ to heck and back! I am woman, hear me roar!!! I need to get back to reading that "Dance of Anger" book. It's all about how we women have been taught to devalue our anger instead of using it to elicit change in ourselves and in our lives - which is what it's meant FOR!!!! (HUGS)