It was last Wednesday that I received the package in the mail with my new lifestyle kit inside of it. I looked at it with skepticism. This was going to help me to reach 40 feeling better than I did at 20? This was going to help me get healthy? Still, if I'd been bet $25,000 that I could spend 30 days on a mostly liquid diet eating one solid food meal a day, I know I'd have said yes. This system was no crazier than that.
I unpacked the items and carefully reviewed the literature, looking carefully at the labels for ingredients. Nothing crazy. Things like black pepper, cayenne pepper, and natural flavors made up what went inside. This may sound funny considering how often I used to dump things like soda and coffees and other not-so-good for you fast food products into myself, but I have always been careful with the products I choose to take. I don't like to take medicines of any kind, and I don't want anything I can't identify going in there.
The next morning, I began the program with one of the shakes. It tasted like chalk. I wondered if I was really going to make it through 30 days of this. I was also still incredibly hungry, which made me wonder if this was actually going to work for me or not. Then I re-reviewed the literature. I'd skipped a step - I'd forgotten the pre-breakfast drink.
I took a scoop of that and put it in 12 oz of warm water. I could deal with that. The hunger pangs faded away. Fortunately, I had ordered multiple flavors of the products. After experimenting with the three, I found the combination that works for me: A scoop of Strawberry-Banana and a scoop of Dutch Chocolate. If I really want to kick it up, I add a packet of their orange energy drink powder.
I struggled with my doubts on Thursday and Friday. Was this worth it? Would it work? I found myself tired sooner, sleeping better but way more than I expected Friday and Saturday night. Was this going to be the norm? Me sleeping so much? I didn't know if I could handle that kind of thing.
I woke up on Monday feeling really good and I made it through a cleanse day - No solid food for 24 hours. Important discovery: low blood sugar brings on headaches. Keep to the schedule of every 2 hours. Don't deviate. Be sure to take the snacks. The tea helps.
On Tuesday, today, I woke up feeling better than I had in a while. I won't be taking my measurements again until day 8, so I won't be able to tell you if I've lost anything since I started, but I feel better and that's worth a lot to me. I lead a busy life, and I can't afford all the slow downs that happen when you're tired and feeling down all the time.
I don't know what the results of this will be. I don't know where I'll end up. This is another twist on my journey toward a year without soda, but I will say this: I like where this part of the road is leading me. I've said it before and it's worth repeating: Once you make one change to take back control of your life, it becomes easier to make that next change - no matter what the change happens to be.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
4 Days Until 7 Months
Here are my measurements from December 30th:
waist: 39"
gut: 48"
hips: 46"
bust: 43"
neck: 14 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/4"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
Here are my measurements for Today, March 26th
Waist: 40.5"
Gut: 48"
Hips: 45 1/2"
bust: 43 1/2"
upper left arm: 13 1/4"
left wrist: 6 3/4"
Left ankle: 10 1/4"
Upper right arm: 14 1/4"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10 1/4"
I bought a weight scale today and discovered I am 195 lbs. I need to lose about 90 pounds to get to a healthy weight for myself.
So far, I've quit drinking soda, I've given up putting extra sugar in anything, and so I decided to kick it up an extra notch. I am taking the Isabody Challenge. I will keep track of my progress with the challenge on this blog.
It's not just the money, although $25,000 would go a long way toward fulfilling some dreams of mine. It's the fact that I'm tired of being unhealthy. I want to enter my 40's looking and feeling better than I have in my whole life. That's what I'm striving to achieve - to be truly healthy for the first time in my life.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
A Tiny Bit of Progress
Just 5 days from 5 months, and I have a little bit of good news to report - at least, good news for me. The needle has budged, there's progress been made. Is it huge? No. Is it where I want to be? No. But it's progress -and progress is what keeps you going.
Yes, I did sit down and pray yesterday. I took my measurements this morning. That's always nerve wracking because I don't know what I'm going to find. I don't know if I'm going to feel encouraged or discouraged. I did feel very encouraged after taking them.
Here are my measurements from December 30th:
waist: 39"
gut: 48"
hips: 46"
bust: 43"
neck: 14 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/4"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
Here are my measurements from today, January 25th:
waist: 38 1/4"
gut: 45 1/4"
hips: 45"
neck: 14 1/2"
bust: 42 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/2"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15 1/4"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
So, my clothes haven't changed in terms of fit - but what's impressive is that I can see they soon will. The gut has definitely diminished even though it's not yet where I want it to be, and there's even been a little movement around the waist. :)
Yes, I did sit down and pray yesterday. I took my measurements this morning. That's always nerve wracking because I don't know what I'm going to find. I don't know if I'm going to feel encouraged or discouraged. I did feel very encouraged after taking them.
Here are my measurements from December 30th:
waist: 39"
gut: 48"
hips: 46"
bust: 43"
neck: 14 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/4"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
Here are my measurements from today, January 25th:
waist: 38 1/4"
gut: 45 1/4"
hips: 45"
neck: 14 1/2"
bust: 42 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/2"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15 1/4"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
So, my clothes haven't changed in terms of fit - but what's impressive is that I can see they soon will. The gut has definitely diminished even though it's not yet where I want it to be, and there's even been a little movement around the waist. :)
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Adding Prayer into the Diet
Today, I was standing in the kitchen thinking about my life. I was thinking about my battle to lose the excess body weight that marks my past failures to make good choices about what I ate and what I drank and what I did with my body. I was thinking about how discouraging it is to do your best to make changes only to see that they have no impact at all - nothing seems to change in your life.
That in turn got me thinking about my husband, and about his struggles with depression. About how he makes changes and they don't seem to have a positive impact on his life and then he gets discouraged and the temptation to give up on those changes becomes overwhelming even when he knows the changes he makes are for the better.
I thought about what my advice to him is - to pray over it - and how he resists my suggestions. Then I remembered something I read the other day. It said, in essence, that if the Devil can't make you bad, he'll try to attack your prayer life. He'll try to get you to the point where the very thought of praying is loathsome and you can't stand it. So you won't do it, and you won't grow in holiness like you should be and you'll end up falling away from faith. I've seen that in action in myself. I have to constantly struggle against the temptation to let other things creep into and take over my prayer life.
This led me to a realization. That same feeling of loathing of the things that you should want to eat is characteristic of the person who is overweight. Either because you can't afford them, or because they take effort to make, or you just don't like the taste of them - you tend to avoid what is good for you and end up eating what isn't. It ends up destroying the body, just as a failure to pray will eventually destroy your faith and lead to a spiritual death in the same sense that not taking care of your body leads to a physical death.
That's when I had an idea. It really shouldn't have been as much a revelation as it was. I mean, I do believe that God wants to be part of every facet of my life - or at least I say I do - but the idea made me aware that I tend to segment parts of my life as belonging to God and not belonging to God. The idea was that maybe I need to recruit God to be my weight loss partner by praying through my dieting. After all, he wants my body healthy just as much as - probably more than - I do. He wants me to see my body as a temple, and he certainly doesn't want that temple being poorly maintained and unfit for worship.
Up until now, I have been trying to do this by myself for the most part. I've been sharing this in blog so that I get a little encouragement from friends and family who follow me on the journey I'm taking, but I don't have any other support systems set up. I can't afford a doctor, so I can't get support from the medical community except what I can find online. But, the good news, is that I can invite God to be part of this diet with me.
He can help me when I become discouraged. He can do what I can't do - undo the damage of past choices - because he lives outside of time. He can help me to see things that I'm doing to sabotage myself in a whole new way, because quite frankly he sees the bigger picture of all of it. He understands, even better than I do, why I do what I do. But in order to help me with it, I have to invite him in. He's a gentleman. He won't come into my struggle uninvited. He won't be Mr. Fix It unless I ask him to be.
So, I'm going to start incorporating prayer into my diet. I'm going to ask for His help and His guidance in taking care of the body that He gave me so that the temple of the Lord is cared for in a manner that is pleasing to Him. I'm going to ask Him to help me fix what I broke, and to show me the way forward. I'm almost 5 months into this no soda challenge. We'll see where the next 5 months take us.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Just 13 Days Away
I am just 13 days away from having passed the five month marker. One of the things that giving up soda has done for me is to give me encouragement to look closer at my life and take control of choices I am making, to see what else I can do to improve my outcome and get my body back under my own control.
A few weeks ago, I started doing planking. At first, my arms would begin trembling right away and I could barely make it to a count of 20. Last time I did it, I was up to a 60 second mark. I've slipped in the past few days and haven't done it every morning, but it's encouraging to see that I can make such large improvements over such a small space of time with daily effort.
Yesterday, I decided to do something I have never done before. I have decided to go on a diet. I will tell you that as a person with very limited financial means it was incredibly discouraging to look at the list of recommended foods and know that this was going to cost me a lot of money to implement, but I did my best.
This morning was my first day of implementing the program. The one thing I have noticed is that while I don't like the hassle of keeping track of calories, it has made me more aware of what I'm doing. It's made me think before adding more sugar to my coffee.
Here's what I had for breakfast:
1 hardboiled egg, large.
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup non-fat milk
1 cup coffee
Doesn't sound bad, right? Except that in the coffee, I added a tablespoon of sugar. I normally add two. Then, I sat down to do my calorie counts. I realized that the one tablespoon of sugar was 98% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar! I have been adding two tablespoons to my tea, and I normally drink between 2-3 cups of tea a day. That means I usually end up having about 300 extra calories from sugar added to my diet each day.
There may still be underlying medical issues - but I can control my sugar intake. I can reduce this amount greatly just by controlling what I put in my tea or my coffee each day. I can go without the sugar entirely in my tea and save it for coffee (I really hate the taste of coffee). I can also gradually reduce the amount of sugar I put in my coffee. That way I'm getting my body more in line with where I need to be in terms of calorie intake.
Sometimes one positive change in your life is what you need to make the next positive change and get yourself headed in the right direction. Giving up soda hasn't changed my waist line the way I hoped - but it has changed my thinking, and maybe that's the more important thing.
A few weeks ago, I started doing planking. At first, my arms would begin trembling right away and I could barely make it to a count of 20. Last time I did it, I was up to a 60 second mark. I've slipped in the past few days and haven't done it every morning, but it's encouraging to see that I can make such large improvements over such a small space of time with daily effort.
Yesterday, I decided to do something I have never done before. I have decided to go on a diet. I will tell you that as a person with very limited financial means it was incredibly discouraging to look at the list of recommended foods and know that this was going to cost me a lot of money to implement, but I did my best.
This morning was my first day of implementing the program. The one thing I have noticed is that while I don't like the hassle of keeping track of calories, it has made me more aware of what I'm doing. It's made me think before adding more sugar to my coffee.
Here's what I had for breakfast:
1 hardboiled egg, large.
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup non-fat milk
1 cup coffee
Doesn't sound bad, right? Except that in the coffee, I added a tablespoon of sugar. I normally add two. Then, I sat down to do my calorie counts. I realized that the one tablespoon of sugar was 98% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar! I have been adding two tablespoons to my tea, and I normally drink between 2-3 cups of tea a day. That means I usually end up having about 300 extra calories from sugar added to my diet each day.
There may still be underlying medical issues - but I can control my sugar intake. I can reduce this amount greatly just by controlling what I put in my tea or my coffee each day. I can go without the sugar entirely in my tea and save it for coffee (I really hate the taste of coffee). I can also gradually reduce the amount of sugar I put in my coffee. That way I'm getting my body more in line with where I need to be in terms of calorie intake.
Sometimes one positive change in your life is what you need to make the next positive change and get yourself headed in the right direction. Giving up soda hasn't changed my waist line the way I hoped - but it has changed my thinking, and maybe that's the more important thing.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Month 4, Day 1: Still hanging in there
I gave up on blogging because even though I wasn't drinking soda, I also wasn't losing weight. Nothing was changing. In fact, I actually gained a couple of inches since the last time I blogged. It was massively discouraging to even talk about it. However, that is the truth about giving up soda: it isn't a panacea that's going to magically fix everything.
That's just as important a finding as anything else. Drinking soda is being blamed for a lot of things, but if after 4 months of going without the pounds haven't magically melted away and I'm still not drinking any, then there must be another culprit at large. Something else that I have to fix to fix the problem.
It's not a lack of exercise on my part. I live in Elko, Nevada. I regularly walk a mile or more a day just in my effort to get to work. This isn't walking on flat, even land. This is walking up 30 and 45 degree angle hills, sometimes with 10-20 pounds worth of groceries. There's plenty of resistence built into my routine, and it's never the same amount or the same weight each day so I can eliminate the notion that it's my body getting used to what I'm doing and plateauing.
Eliminating soda has reduced my sugar tolerance. I used to take 3 tablespoons in everything. I have cut back to 2, so I've eliminated another source of sugar in my diet and there still hasn't been a positive change. In fact, as I said, I've actually put on some inches since the summer time.
Here are my current measurements:
waist: 39"
gut: 48"
hips: 46"
bust: 43"
neck: 14 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/4"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
I do have a thought about what's going on. It would have to be tested and proven first, before I could call it more than just a thought, but here's what I'm thinking may have happened.
I used to be super skinny. 98 pounds worth of skinny, about 12 pounds underweight for someone 5' tall. It didn't matter what I ate, none of it stuck. Getting pregnant with my son changed that. I put on 44 1/2 pounds with him.
This indicates that there was already a problem with my thyroid, which regulates metabolism. It was cranked up into overdrive. The hormones in pregnancy altered that, bringing my thyroid back into line with what it should have been.
I drank a lot of soda back then, at least a super big gulp a day - roughly a 2 liter of soda a day. That's a lot of caffeeine intake. Caffeeine as we all know is a thyroid stimulant, cranking up the metabolism artificially. What most people don't tell you is that when you artificially begin stimulating the thyroid, the body will eventually stop doing it on its own. It doesn't want to waste resources that it could be using elsewhere doing something that you're just going to override anyway.
Add in a second factor - which is that I took a depo provera shot shortly after my son was born - and that massive dose of hormones escalated the situation. Sent it into overdrive. Years of heavy soda drinking and that combined to wear out the thyroid early. It's not functioning like it should be.
About 8 years ago I went to 3 or 4 doctors trying to figure out what was wrong. None of them were listening. All of them told me my hormone levels were "normal", despite the evidence I gave them that it wasn't normal for me. This is the problem with charts and graphs. What's normal for one person isn't always normal for every person. I'm pretty sure the results would be different now. However, I can't afford a doctor to verify this.
I think a long-term study needs to be done on the effects of soda on the thyroid, to see whether it causes the thyroid to burn out early as I'm guessing it does. Here are the symptoms of hypothyroidism in women:
That's just as important a finding as anything else. Drinking soda is being blamed for a lot of things, but if after 4 months of going without the pounds haven't magically melted away and I'm still not drinking any, then there must be another culprit at large. Something else that I have to fix to fix the problem.
It's not a lack of exercise on my part. I live in Elko, Nevada. I regularly walk a mile or more a day just in my effort to get to work. This isn't walking on flat, even land. This is walking up 30 and 45 degree angle hills, sometimes with 10-20 pounds worth of groceries. There's plenty of resistence built into my routine, and it's never the same amount or the same weight each day so I can eliminate the notion that it's my body getting used to what I'm doing and plateauing.
Eliminating soda has reduced my sugar tolerance. I used to take 3 tablespoons in everything. I have cut back to 2, so I've eliminated another source of sugar in my diet and there still hasn't been a positive change. In fact, as I said, I've actually put on some inches since the summer time.
Here are my current measurements:
waist: 39"
gut: 48"
hips: 46"
bust: 43"
neck: 14 1/2"
upper left arm: 15 1/4"
left wrist: 7"
left ankle: 10 1/2"
upper right arm: 15"
right wrist: 7"
right ankle: 10"
I do have a thought about what's going on. It would have to be tested and proven first, before I could call it more than just a thought, but here's what I'm thinking may have happened.
I used to be super skinny. 98 pounds worth of skinny, about 12 pounds underweight for someone 5' tall. It didn't matter what I ate, none of it stuck. Getting pregnant with my son changed that. I put on 44 1/2 pounds with him.
This indicates that there was already a problem with my thyroid, which regulates metabolism. It was cranked up into overdrive. The hormones in pregnancy altered that, bringing my thyroid back into line with what it should have been.
I drank a lot of soda back then, at least a super big gulp a day - roughly a 2 liter of soda a day. That's a lot of caffeeine intake. Caffeeine as we all know is a thyroid stimulant, cranking up the metabolism artificially. What most people don't tell you is that when you artificially begin stimulating the thyroid, the body will eventually stop doing it on its own. It doesn't want to waste resources that it could be using elsewhere doing something that you're just going to override anyway.
Add in a second factor - which is that I took a depo provera shot shortly after my son was born - and that massive dose of hormones escalated the situation. Sent it into overdrive. Years of heavy soda drinking and that combined to wear out the thyroid early. It's not functioning like it should be.
About 8 years ago I went to 3 or 4 doctors trying to figure out what was wrong. None of them were listening. All of them told me my hormone levels were "normal", despite the evidence I gave them that it wasn't normal for me. This is the problem with charts and graphs. What's normal for one person isn't always normal for every person. I'm pretty sure the results would be different now. However, I can't afford a doctor to verify this.
I think a long-term study needs to be done on the effects of soda on the thyroid, to see whether it causes the thyroid to burn out early as I'm guessing it does. Here are the symptoms of hypothyroidism in women:
- Weight gain, even though you are not eating more food
- Increased sensitivity to cold
- Constipation
- Muscle weakness
- Joint or muscle pain
- Depression
- Fatigue (feeling very tired)
- Pale dry skin
- A puffy face
- A hoarse voice
- Excessive menstrual bleeding
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Day 27: Almost through the first month
I find this thought incredible. I am almost through the first month without soda, and I don't miss it. I get the occasional moment where I look at or think about a drink, but I've learned a lot about what drives those and how to avoid putting myself in the way of temptation. Giving up soda isn't something I ever thought I would do, and here I am almost a whole month in without it.
I was listening to someone on a webinar this morning, and what struck me about his talk was that he said we are not afraid of situations. We are afraid of how we will feel about them. I think giving up soda has taught me how true this is. I was afraid giving up soda would somehow be too hard, that I wouldn't be able to do it, that I wouldn't like doing it. I was afraid of missing soda too much. Then, I do it, and I find out that I don't really miss it at all.
Sometimes, when we set out to change our lives, we surprise ourselves. Things we thought were impossible or that would be extremely difficult prove almost effortless. It's about the right timing in our lives, about the right mindset, and the will to do it. It helps knowing that there are people paying attention to what I do, and that I'm accountable for the failure if I choose to give in to temptation. It helps, too, to have seen positive changes come from this small change in my life.
I was listening to someone on a webinar this morning, and what struck me about his talk was that he said we are not afraid of situations. We are afraid of how we will feel about them. I think giving up soda has taught me how true this is. I was afraid giving up soda would somehow be too hard, that I wouldn't be able to do it, that I wouldn't like doing it. I was afraid of missing soda too much. Then, I do it, and I find out that I don't really miss it at all.
Sometimes, when we set out to change our lives, we surprise ourselves. Things we thought were impossible or that would be extremely difficult prove almost effortless. It's about the right timing in our lives, about the right mindset, and the will to do it. It helps knowing that there are people paying attention to what I do, and that I'm accountable for the failure if I choose to give in to temptation. It helps, too, to have seen positive changes come from this small change in my life.
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