Getting Back to Real

I haven't posted here for a long time. A very long time. And so you'll most likely be shocked to see me here now.  :) But it's not fair of me to ask you to join me on my weight-loss journey and then not include every chapter. So, I have a story to tell you.

Last March, so yes, a year ago, I broke my foot and was in a cast for a month. It was super hard for me to get around, so people were having to wait on me hand and ... foot ... get it?  :)  Anyway, my kids just weren't feeding me very well, even though they tried. And my husband was dousing all my food in lemon pepper, which is good every so often, but not on every single meal and snack. I expressed my frustration, and my husband went out and got me some frozen burritos. I could use my walker to hop into the kitchen, warm them up, put them in a Ziplock bag which I would hold between my teeth, and then I would hop back into my bedroom to eat them. That's how I got through that portion of my life.

I was still doing well and still losing weight and so I decided that cheating must not be as bad as everyone says it is. Before long, I was cheating quite a lot.

Now, keep in mind, I'm an emotional eater. Food and I are very emotionally connected. That's a key component here.

Then I came face-to-face with some really super hard problems in my life. Things that I didn't expect, hadn't planned for, didn't know how to cope with, and because I didn't have tools to deal with them, I started eating sugar again too.

I'm still off caffeine - I didn't go totally off the deep end.  :)

In the course of all this, I gained back about eighteen pounds in the last year.

Now, I'm still showing a loss of 70, and I look amazing considering where I was two years ago. But I know that I'm eighteen pounds heavier than I was one year ago, and that makes me feel like a failure, like I know better and I was doing better and now I've let myself down.

What this has done is really emphasized to me how important it is to get the emotional side of ourselves in gear whenever we try to take care of our bodies. They are interlinked. You can do all the right things, like I did for so long, and you can enjoy the benefits, but when something happens that overwhelms you, you can go right back to your previous habits.

I'll clarify and state that I didn't totally revert to everything I was doing before, but I certainly was doing enough harmful things to myself that I wasn't honoring everything I'd accomplished.

But now it's time to face some music and get back on track.

I've had some really good talks with the Lord over this last week and asked for His help in getting through this. Trying to work through my trials without food as my comfort ... that scares me. I'll be completely honest about that. We're talking, terrified. We're not just talking little trials - we're talking, drive-me-into-the-dirt trials. But I'm going to try it. I'm going to give myself the chance to see how strong I can be, and give God the chance to do what He said He'd do in my life.

So! Today, March 2nd, I'm back off sugar. I'm going to give myself about two weeks to acclimate and then get back off grain. Deep breath ... deep breath ... I've done this before, and I know I can do it again.

And I will keep you updated better. :)