Holiday ramblings and Disney update

 I both love and hate this time of year.  It is so exciting and so frustrating at the same time.  It starts with Halloween where candy is pushed in our faces for six weeks before the little holiday occurs.  Talk about nerve-wracking.  Then it moves to Thanksgiving where the entire point of most people's holidays consist of not just overeating but binging to the point of near illness.    Add the gloomy and increasingly colder weather and it makes this battle with food much more difficult.  We had a fantastic vacation and I did good with my food while we were gone but now that I am home I just want to eat.   I hate this.  63 pounds gone and I all I want to do is feed my face.   UGH!!!!   Sooooo, I have decided to go on maintenance for the next two months.  I just want to maintain and not focus on losing.  As long as I manage to get through this season without gaining a single pound I will consider it a success.

Our Disney Adventure

Forgive any typos and/or ramblings, we haven't been up terribly long and it was a short nights' sleep.

On Monday morning we loaded up and headed to the airport. The kids were fantastic and did a wonderful job through check in and security. We flew Southwest and the flight attendants were super helpful. My mom was able to board first because of her handicapped status due to her knee and back so my parents were able to save us seats all together. I managed to leave my phone on the plane when we disembarked and ended up without a way to keep in contact with my sponsor.

Chance didn’t like being trapped in his car seat so he fussed some but nothing too drastic until we started making our decent into Orlando when he started wailing and pounding on his ears. We tried to get him to drink, to eat, to chew gum but he wanted nothing to do with any of it. He was totally distraught. We were very grateful to have filled an antibiotic prescription for him on Sunday. He was a pretty miserable little man on Monday and Tuesday but perked up by Wednesday.

Christian was amazing! Every fear we have had about his behaviors over the years was blown out of the water this week. He enjoyed every new experience. He loved flying, he loved the hotel, and the parks and meeting other kids. He loved meeting the characters (except the princesses who he completely snubbed).

Patience was little miss high anxiety all week and was easily moved to tears but she was in heaven meeting the characters.

On Monday we headed to the hotel and spent the evening relaxing. The kids and I went swimming in the hotel pool.

Because of my sprained ankle last week I spent my time on a motorized cart. My mom had one too. The big kids were able to spend some time on our laps so they didn’t end up too worn out. Let me tell you that spraining my ankle just before our trip turned out to be a good thing in some ways. We were able to get fast pass handicapped access to almost all of the rides we wanted to go on.

We went to Epcot on Tuesday. It is really beautiful there. The big kids and Mike and I rode Spaceship Earth together. It was very cool. We had a character lunch with the princesses while we were there and got to eat traditional Norwegian food. Patience was so excited through it all. We also went to the character spot that day so the kids got to meet Mickey and the gang there. Chance was napping but got kisses from Minnie while he was asleep and woke to her nose in his face. Amazingly he wasn’t afraid.

Sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday $150 of ours went missing, it was our Christmas money and we planned to buy goodies for the holidays with it, I was also going to use part of it to pay for internet access for a couple of days while we were there so I could track on SP.

Wednesday we went to Magic Kingdom. We had character lunch reservations that day so we just kind of roamed for a bit before our lunch with Pooh and friends. Patience and I stood in line to meeting Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen because they weren’t at the princess lunch. , Then we went to the buffet. It was great to just sit there and have the characters come to us. I have never seen anything as precious and Chance’s reaction to meeting Tigger. He was soooooo excited. My dad has most of those pictures though. The big kids had a blast meeting Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore as well. The buffet was fantastic.

We had planned to go to the beach on Thursday but we woke up and it was quite chilly so we ended up back and Magic Kingdom upon the request of the kids. Between the two days we saw the big parade once and two smaller parades. We saw one castle show all the way through and bits of it several times. We rode at least 10 rides. Patience rode Space Mountain with my dad and I and thought it was incredible. We went through the Haunted Mansion which the kids all liked. We road Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin with all of the kids who had a blast. Chance had a meltdown when he had to get off of it. We went through Minnie’s Country house, road the teacups which Chance loved too, went on the It’s a Small world ride which was just beautiful, drove on the tomorrow land speedway, and more. It was a blast.

We went to see the “Hoop Dee Doo” dinner theatre which was sooooo much fun. The kids were clapping and singing and everyone was laughing. The food was truly wonderful and served family style. Our last day was planned as a beach back up but because of computer issues it took 2+ hours to check out of the hotel. Since that was our travel time to and from the beach we scratched those plans and ended up going to the World’s Largest McDonald’s Play Place instead. We also stopped at Target to get souvenirs which would have cost us almost 2-3 times as much at the parks.

Our flight home was full of Chance and Patience melt-downs but we survived it. Chance fell asleep as soon as we landed and we were able to carry him off of the plane in his car seat and using the stroller not only get him to the car but get the seat appropriately secured in the car. He woke up for about a minute as I slid the belt through the back of the seat. We made it home safely.

It was very nice staying at a Disney resort. The food plan was worth it just for the character lunches. We would have gotten better use out of it if we had really understood it. If you go and decide to purchase a meal plan use your snacks for breakfast (or even stop and pick up some yogurt and fruit) at the hotel or snacks at the parks, then use your fast service meals for lunch or dinner at the parks and your full service for character meals. We blew our fast service meals on breakfast which was pretty much worthless and we could have paid 1/3 for at McD’s.

It was a wonderful vacation but if I had to do it all over again I would have waited a couple of more years. First, Chance didn’t really get what was going on and was out of sorts most of the week. He was sick so it is hard to know for sure but I think he just wanted to be home and was mostly confused by it all. Christian and Patience had lots of fun but were still easily worn out and Patience hasn’t outgrown the little emotional outbursts that will hopefully become fewer with time.

All in all it was a fantastic vacation. I did great with my food. I was up one pound yesterday but I figure that I am retaining at least a couple of pounds from eating salty foods on the run and not drinking as much water as usual.

We came home to the cats having knocked my laptop off of the table and they broke the cord so I am computing from the ancient beast of our 7 year old computer. Trying to figure out where Christmas money is coming from now. Again I am going to work hard at letting go and letting God lead me to where I need to be.

Let go and let God

The past two months of my life has been more than chaotic.  If I didn't have OA, online meetings, f2f meetings, other OAs to call I know what I would have done.  I would have gone back to being completely out of control.  In the past two months we have battled rotavirus in our toddler, a child being bullied at at school, another child battling anger, our daughter was diagnosed with asthma, our car broke down, our landlords told us that they need to put our house on the market and we discovered that we still can't get financed to buy it or any other home, our money issues have been a mess, I have had chronic bronchitis for nearly a month, the kids have been battling severe allergies, our gifted son was being ignored by the staff at school, and the list goes on.  To top it off my parents are gifting us with a trip to Walt Disney World next week and I sprained my ankle two days ago.  

Through it all my sponsor has been beside me.  When it has been overwhelming she has been able to talk me down.  If I needed someone and she couldn't be reached I grabbed my phone list or wrote an email or wrote a blog entry.  My food has not been spectacular through it all, it hasn't even been good but it has been okay.  I have not binged (which is a huge success for me), I have not turned to sugary foods, I have not gone over my daily calories but I have been carb loading which can lead to problems for me.   

The other day I realized that I haven't been reviewing the steps each day and I decided to start.   I told my sponsor that my theme for each day right now is "Let go and let God".  After I sprained my ankle not only was I devastated but my parents were upset by the money that has been spent to make this a fantastic vacation and now I am injured.  However, after just letting go and asking my HP to take my burdens and to guide me I have been able to, with the help of family and friends,  stay almost entirely off of my feet for the past couple of days.  I have crutches to use for the times it just isn't possible.  The big kids were taken to school yesterday by my parents and picked up by a friend.  Someone else stopped and picked up soy milk for the toddler when I ran out before my husband got home from work.  My ankle feels a ton better than it did two days ago and I think I will be healed enough by Monday to spend some time on my feet each day. I was a bit panicked about not having internet access while we are gone (we can't afford an extra $50 for the week) and a friend from OA handed me $10 so I can log in during the middle of the week and enter my food into sparkpeople and touch base with my sponsor and anyone else I feel a need to reach out for.   I just had to share how amazing things can turn out when you allow yourself to be led and you do accept the things you can't change.   

There is a serenity to be found.  I can't undo my injury but I can rent a motorized cart to ride around the parks.  I can't change our financial situation at the moment but I was able to talk with our landlords and they are giving us until spring to move so we have our income tax return to finance the venture with.  They also gave us the name for some lenders who could possibly help.   I can't be on my feet making the house sparkle before we leave but I can get the family up and working and at least get it completely picked up so we don't come home to chaos. 


The whole point of this ramble is that I am incredibly grateful.  I could weigh 20 pounds more than I did 8 weeks ago, instead I have lost 4-5 pounds during that time.   I could have been on the path to destroying all of the progress I have made with my help but instead I am still (at least mostly) on track!

I am not alone

Sometimes it is hard not to feel isolated when much of the world doesn't understand the struggles I face each day but them I remember....

I am not alone.  I will never be alone.   I know that if I listen I will be lead on the right path.  

I am so entirely grateful for the support of friends and family as well.  I can't do this on my own.   I am grateful for my sponsor and my OA friends.  I am thankful, in this month of Thanksgiving, that I have found a new way to live.

Addiction is such a dirty word

ad·dic·tion   /əˈdɪkʃən/ Show Spelled[uh-dik-shuhn]

–noun

the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

I think there are lots of people around who have compulsive eating problems who would never come to a realization that the way they were living was the life of an addict.   It saddens me to see other people living like I did, in denial about the problems facing them.   It breaks my heart.   I spent so many years making decision after decision that would lead to my early death.   I wish I could travel back in time and tell my 16 year old self that in 20 years weighing 165 pounds would feel amazing to me.  That I would be one of the thinnest of my acquaintances.   How dreamy it would have been if I had sought counseling, an OA meeting, or even talked with a Dr. before I had done so much damage to my health and to my self-esteem.

During high school I was so incredibly shy and my feelings were hurt so easily.  There was a small group of boys who  I was friends with but the oldest of the bunch not so much.  I would love to go back and ask him if he was compensating for a small penis by picking on the insecure teenage girl.   As for the mean and nasty teenage girls, well most of them look like I did six months ago.  Karma.   I reacted to all the sadness, shyness, insecurity, depression and insecurity by sneaking food.  By eating crud instead of making healthy choices.  I pray that my children somehow escape the teenage years without lasting scars.

I went away (an entire 1 hour drive) to college with a very low self esteem and shortly after I started school my 22 year old boyfriend of 15 months decided to dump me because weekends weren't enough.   I moved forward by spending time with friends, including guy friends.  A word of advice.  Don't become friends with the boyfriends of your girl friends.  Eventually it will bite you in the ass.   Whether it is your friends' resenting you or you picking the wrong guy to befriend who takes advantage of you (or worse) it just isn't a good idea.   I am not saying that girls and guys can't be friends, just try to avoid situations that could make your life complicated and difficult.

After some pretty intense stuff went down I ended up with a private dorm room a few months into college.   I think that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.  Not only did I eat crap in the cafeteria but I came back to my room and drank soda and chose very poor snacks.  If I hadn't made some good friends I can't imagine how much more weight I could have put on.   

Another bit of advice.  Unless your grades are perfect and you actually have study skills (high school work came easy to me so I never really developed study skills or the ability to manage my time well)  make sure that your parents are monitoring your progress.  I had some problems financially and also ended up in a pretty severe depression my third year of school.  It led to me skipping classes, dropping classes and eventually transferring in an effort to salvage my academic career.  I failed to salvage anything.  I had some close friends left from high school but wasn't able to keep in touch with many of my friends from my first years of college.  

Another sage bit of wisdom.  If you can possibly get through college without student loans do everything you can to make it happen.  Go to a community college and pay cash, apply for grants and scholarships, transfer to a state school with great grades and get a scholarship.  Don't blow it.   What I wouldn't give to have been an educated professional for the past 14 years.

There are definite advantages to how my life moved forward after college though.  One of my very best friends and I were reintroduced to each other by a mutual friend.  We had barely known each other in high school but it was amazing to find someone so easy to love.  She is the reason I met my husband, over 12 years ago.  I turn 37 in February.  I will start back to college in January.  I am attending the local community college.  I am determined to ace my classes and begin the process of forgiveness---forgiving myself for all of the bad choices I made and the damage I caused myself.  In so many ways I was more a victim of myself than of any high school bully, purse snatcher, credit card company or poorly chosen friends.
 

So, if you are a person who eats to illness often, who hides food, who eats in secret, who binges, etc.  Please step back and figure out that this is an addiction and that no diet alone can make a lasting change in your life.  You have to move forward and heal all of the things that lead you to self destruction.   Find counseling, find a support group, check out an OA meeting online, on the phone or face to face, talk to your doctor, talk with a friend.  Whatever it takes to start the healing process and change your life for the better just do it.

Step 3

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 

This is just a partial definition of the word Will in its noun form


noun, verb, willed, will·ing. –noun

1.

the faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own actions: the freedom of the will.

2.

power of choosing one's own actions: to have a strong or a weak will.

3.

the act or process of using or asserting one's choice; volition: My hands are obedient to my will.

  

Each of us was born with free will.   We have made our own decisions.  We have made our own mistakes.  We are either people who learn from those mistakes or we aren't but we are always in possession of an ability to choose where we will go. We use our experiences, intellect, conscience, feelings,  wants and our needs to guide us to those decisions.   Sometimes our wants outweigh the rest and sometimes our emotions guide us to decisions that we know are mistakes but somehow we keep making the same decisions over and over again.

That was and continues to be the center of my compulsive overeating.   I have spent more than 2 decades making decisions about food when I am being led by emotions and wants.   I can no longer rely on myself alone to make the right decisions.   I must turn my life over to God.  I must turn my will over to Him.  I have spent so many years trying to assert my own independence that it is difficult to listen to another voice.  When I remember to start my day with the first three steps from OA my days move by so much more easily.   I am able to listen to God speaking through my mind, my conscience, my heart and make the right decisions when it comes to food.  

When I decide that I am handling things okay and I can do it on my own is when I begin to fail.  My self absorption leads me to believe I am infallible that I can have a bite of chocolate and move on from there with no lasting ill effects.   Oh boy, how I am wrong and how I fail to meet my goals when I don't trust this God that moves in me.  I am not a "religious" person.  I don't push my faith on those around me but I hope that as I continue on this journey that they can see my faith shining through.   

I am Tina, I am a compulsive overeater.   I am learning to heal not just my body but my spirit and my psyche by working the 12 steps of OA.   I have lost 61 pounds over the past 5 months.   I have made amazing changes and have seen myself blossom over these past months.  I am enrolled and am going back to college in January.  I have been actively looking for jobs that will work with my husbands' schedule, around my school and let me be home with all of my children in the evenings.   I have been building my crochet business instead of just talking about it.   I have been seeking out new friends.

Life is in chaos right now.  We found out just a few days ago that we have to find financing for our home or move, our landlords just can't afford to keep renting it.  We are hunting down mortgage lenders who work with people with lets just say less than perfect credit.  We have been juggling back and forth about staying here because if we can find financing we can probably find more house for the same amount of money, maybe even less money.   We love our home though and have put a lot into it, we have put new flooring down through most of the house, we have painted and decorated, we fenced the yard.   We have loved this home and our babies have grown into Kindergartners here.  Our youngest came home to this house as a newborn.  We have been here exactly five years.   I love our neighborhood, I have friends here that I would miss but we are looking at the positives of the situation.  We can no longer sit around on our duffs and let the world move past us, we have to be proactive and figure out where we are going from here.   Luckily our landlords are great and we have some time to figure out financing and exactly what we are going to do.

We are getting ready for vacation, we are taking the kids to Walt Disney World in a few weeks.  The baby won't remember it but the big kids are so incredibly excited.

Needless to say there is lots of extra stuff going on with us.  Halloween was a killer for me.  5 months without chocolate and in 18 hours I ate about 20 bite size candy bars.  Not my proudest moment. 

I woke up the next morning and prayed.  I asked God to guide me, to lead me in each decision.  The past 3 days have been blessedly peaceful.  I will continue to succeed.  I cannot do this without my higher power, I can't do this without my supportive friends at OA and I certainly can't do this without a sponsor who keeps me from getting too far ahead of myself.  I am blessed to have a wonderfully supportive family and amazing friends. 

Through all of this I continue to ask God to lead me. 

A Love/Hate Relationship

The reasons I love Halloween

And the reasons I hate Halloween

This is just what I dug into today.  I hit the stash for about this much last night as well.  It is amazing to me that after 5 months abstinent from chocolate how easy it was to put that first bite in my mouth and not stop.  I am done now.  The chocolate is heading to work with my husband tomorrow.  The kids are going to pick out two pieces for each day of school this week and the rest of it is going to go to a local dentist who is buying back candy and sending it to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  

So, today is day 1.  One day at a time.  I need to remember that I have done this one day at a time.  I have become healthy.   I am sure the last month and a half of stressors combined with Halloween candy to push me over the edge but I just don't need the temptation of having it around the house. 

I am down 61 pounds.  I have done amazingly well over the past two months not binging, I have hit the carbs hard a few times.  I have hit the chocolate for the past 24 hours but nothing like I could have done in the past.   I am going to get past the Halloween Hurdle and move forward.

Hitting the veggies and protein hard today to make up for the extra carbs.  I plan to continue that through the week.  I have found that when I go through a carb loading stage if I back off of them a lot for just a few days that I am able to get back to a regular balanced diet and stick to it.

So much for getting back on track

My ranges are fine, fat/calories/carbs/protein but I still find myself eating things that are trigger foods.  I have had Jiffy frosting mix sitting in the cabinet for a year.  Last night I was in scavenging mode and found myself mixing up frosting and eating it by the spoonful.  I have decided to look at the positives of the situation though.  Last night I mixed the frosting and ate it, but after 5 or 6 spoonfuls I stopped.  I walked to the sink and I ran the frosting down the drain.   In the past I could have eaten the entire package and possibly made another one.  As it was I ate under two servings of frosting.   I wish I hadn't hit the sugar but am very grateful that I pulled myself back from the brink.  

The good news for the day is that 36 hours into antibiotics I am beginning to feel a bit better than I was.  I am hoping to recover quickly from this nasty bronchitis and get back into shape before we head to Disney World next month.