Kansans and Friends In Weight Loss

I am cross posting this from  my blog over  at  Wildheart’s  Works.

I am writing this post for two reasons. One my blogger friend Anthony over at Old School SEO had something to do with it and after 7 years of my grandmother being gone I decided I needed to deal with her death in some way. My choice of dealing with things has always been writing.

My grandmother was my mother. She along with my grandfather gave up their retirement to take care of four kids that suffered early on the signs of attachment issues and early trauma from being neglected, and abandoned. My biological mother was not a mother to us. She neglected us and ended up being the cause behind us being taken away by the state and being put into foster homes. My grandparents fought hard to get us back together because they didn’t want us to go around in the world wondering who our brothers and sisters were. Despite the dysfunctional ways they grew up they had their family throughout their life. As soon as my mom went through all the motions for the court to fake she had changed she ditched us. I was 7 at the time. My grandmother made me who I am today a strong woman who knows how to take care of herself and her son. She made sure that I would not follow the same footsteps that my mom did. She took me aside and showed me how to do everything that involved running a household. By the time I was 15 and forced to leave home I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I could take care of myself when the time came. Our relationship afterwards was tested due to the fact that my grandfather who molested me held all the emotional cards to keep her from leaving him.

There are so many good memories I have of her and so many memories I have that I know I tried her patience time and time again. I was angry not at her but at the fact I would never get to know my dad and at the fact that I had no idea why my mom didn’t love me enough to want to stick around to be a mom to me. I was angry at being put in foster homes and juggled all over the place. Later I became angry because I was being molested and lived in a town where no one believed me until I did something drastic to get out of the situation. I could never be angry with my grandmother. I loved her too much. It wasn’t until I had been in three abusive relationships that I knew what she suffered being with my grandfather from her perspective.

I did falter in my confidence as a mom when she passed away because I didn’t know what I was going to do without her. Then a voice that was more like a scream than a whisper told me I was going to do what I did every day. Get up and take care of my son. Be the mother she tried to teach my mom to be, but had succeeded in teaching me to be. She gave me all the tools to be a great mother. She is my inspiration for running my blogs and doing what I do on the internet each day. I keep a picture of her handy now to look at when I get to feeling down or depressed. She seems to look at me like “You can do whatever you put your mind to; you are a pretty girl with a great complexion and you’re very smart.”

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Yesterday was the last day for my Emotional Eating 101 free articles emailing. In the last article we are given what are called 6 failure strategies and are asked to look at them to see where we fall. For space and times sake I am going to just give you the strategy and the first sentence to give you a glimpse into the description of the strategy.

Failure Strategy #1: Deprive and Binge
Almost every single diet book and diet plan leads to the deprive-and-binge approach, and so this is the most common strategy.

Failure Strategy #2: Binge and Run
This is the approach where
you allow yourself to overeat, or try to exist side by side with your
addiction, but try to compensate for it with exercise.

Failure Strategy #3: Binge and Purge
The binge and purge
cycle of bulimia is a very dangerous strategy, and luckily it is
normally viewed as an unhealthy approach to weight management.

Failure Strategy #4: Going Public
I call the fourth failure
strategy “Going Public.” I’ve seen many variations of this strategy,
including losing weight for a specific event such as an upcoming
wedding or family reunion, or making a public declaration that you’ve
started a diet, or buying clothes that fit only if you lose weight, or
paying to join a support group that encourages success but rejects you
if you fail.

Failure Strategy #5: The Blame Game
Do you curse parental
genes for giving you a slow metabolism? If so, you’ve fallen prey to
the fifth failure method–blaming the extra pounds on your metabolism.

Failure Strategy #6: Medicate the Hunger, Trick the Metabolism
In
our culture, many seek a magic pill to dissolve cellulite, reverse
weight gain, and make getting thin a breeze. This search constitutes
the sixth and final failure strategy.

Then we are asked to think back to a time when you tried to lose weight with one of the
failure strategies. Describe the attempt in detail. Was emotional
eating the main reason it was unsuccessful? If not, why didn’t that
strategy work?

For me the first strategy certainly holds true. I am one to find a diet that restricts me and then when it puts me into feeling like I am deprived I want to immediately go off of it because I don’t want to be hungry all the time. Now with the fifth strategy that is something I can honestly say that is a problem for me I don’t blame it on genes that my metabolism has slowed over the last couple of years. When I started taking birth control and Zoloft together it did cause some weight gain and also caused my metabolism to stall out. This is where the vicious cycle of depression rears it’s ugly head because I am on both medications for a reason. I need the birth control more for regulating that time of the month and allowing for an easier time of it during that time. I need the Zoloft to function every day.

I tried Nutri System and that diet was too restrictive. Even though I had great immediate results I felt starved and the cost was too much. I have sat in on a Weight Watchers meeting but when I went it felt too robotic. I don’t do well with that approach. I have tried Isagenix which again has some great short term results but I couldn’t handle being physically hungry for the first week on the program and it was an MLM type product that they would try and sell you only if you became a distributor. I didn’t want to become a distributor at the get go I just wanted to lose weight and see if the product was right for me. I have tried ephedra based products. Now I am here to tell you that is one thing that did work for me. In a matter of two months I easily lost 10 pounds because it kick started my metabolism so I could lose the weight.

I know I know what your thinking,”that’s failure strategy number 6,” and your right. I needed it and to be honest if it sounds like a cop out here or a sell out if I could find it on the market again I probably would go out and buy it because it was the only thing that worked. With that being said though I still have deep seeded emotional issues to deal with and I know this too.

What I need to do is refocus my energies back into running my support group full steam ahead because that is what has helped me with my emotional eating. I need to bring us out of the box and make us more main stream, but everyone that I talk to says I have to have a degree to do this and that so I have a lesser chance of being held liable in case someone runs into a problem. To that I can only say even though I am not a Dr. I am still someone who has the same struggles that people who are losing weight have. I don’t need a degree to support someone and to be a source for assisting them in finding resources in their community to help them with their weight loss needs. I don’t need a degree to sit quietly by while someone sobs their frustrations in life out to me and I don’t need a degree to take that persons hand and tell them I DO KNOW what they are going through. I don’t need a degree to take that person in my arms and give them the comfort of a hug to make them feel they are not alone. I got my degree in the school of hard knocks a very long time ago. I have street smarts and am working on the book smarts. Those two combined can be a very lethal combination.

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Try to pinpoint the times when you were tempted to break your diet or overeat. What were the main causes? Were you anxious or angry?How about depressed or stressed? If you do eat during these times, how specifically did it make you feel? Content or safe? Numb or detached?How many distinct patterns can you identify?
The most recent incident that I wanted to overeat but fought it was when I found out that my sons father had been approved to be released back to the woman he was with when he committed the crime that landed him in prison. I found out that the parole plan had been approved back in Nov. of 2007. I was furious that they did all of this without considering what kind of impact it would have on his son. I was even more anxious when I found out that I would have to be facing him this coming month so soon after his release to have to go before the court to settle child support. Again no one told me a damn thing about any of this until I had to call for information and no one told me that the judge had revoked the warrant for his arrest in Douglas county so he could do work release. It feels like the parent in prison has more rights than the parent out in the world trying to work to make it for her son. I was glad that on both of these occasions I was broke and also had a pretty slim selection of food here at the house to medicate myself. If there would have been ice cream here the whole half gallon would have been gone in one sitting I would have really felt crappy afterwards but that is the reality of the situation.

Beside emotional eating patterns, what evidence for food addiction can you find in your life? Your weight might be one piece of evidence, but there is probably more if you think about it. Try to think of at least a few things besides your weight that show food addiction plays a major part in your life.
I like chocolate and ice cream.Those are my two food weaknesses. My other addiction is Diet Pepsi.I really am hopelessly addicted to that I have to have a case in the fridge at all times. I know all the caffeine isn’t good for me especially when I am trying to wind down at the end of the day, but due to all the medications I am on that make me sleepy I have to have one thing that keeps me awake and alert albeit artificially.
You undoubtedly have positive motivations to lose weight. What are these positive motivations? Try describing what you would feel like if you reached your target weight. After you’re done, ask yourself why these motivations aren’t strong enough to carry you to success?

My big motivation is that I want to always be healthy. I do not ever want the life many relatives on my mothers side of the family have had. So many have had heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancers the whole lot. I just don’t want that for myself ever. I don’t want to be 60 yrs old and taking insulin injections instead of going out and taking in a movie because the insulin is taking more of my money to live and I can’t afford to do other things I want to be doing. I want to live long enough to see my son grow up to be a good man and find a good woman if he wants. If he chooses to have kids I want to live long enough to see those grandchildren and I want to have the energy to keep up with them. I want to be healthy so I can make clear headed decisions for my son right now at this moment in time. I would say I want to look nice in clothes but I don’t look bad in the clothes I have right now, I could look better but feeling better and having more self confidence still outweighs that.If I were to lose the weight that I need to lose I would feel even better than I do right now. It isn’t necessarily that these motivations aren’t strong enough it is that too often even with the help of Zoloft depression takes hold of my brain and I can’t shake the fog that settles there even if I try very hard to shake the cobwebs. This will be a process for me for the rest of my life.

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I am doing some more work into emotional eating as it is something that is a big part of my love hate relationship with food.I was surfing The Fit Shack blog the yesterday and JoLynn Braley was talking about the Shrink Yourself Diet Plan that looks into the emotional side of eating. Well I took the free diet profile analysis and surprisingly it was dead on as to what my eating habits look like. It said that I am a merry go round dieter. Which is very true I freely admit this.

I decided to sign up for the four day emotional eating 101 emails. They give you an article to read and then some questions to ask yourself. These are the questions they ask in the first module.

How hard is it for you to see emotional eating in your life? Is it very visible? If so, describe the instances you’ve got in mind. Do you think instances like this are the main obstacle to you losing
weight? If it’s not so visible, why do you think you have trouble eating less and exercising more?
For me it isn’t very hard to see where I do a chunk of my emotional eating. I seem to do a lot of mindless eating when I am working on the computer and I also used to have a very bad habit of going for what ever was close when I would get angry or upset or depressed. This happened frequently when I was growing up it seemed food was my only outlet from the abuse. I knew I was a little bit overweight it seemed as though I was always 20 pounds overweight and could never get under a certain number because I knew what I needed to do in order to stay in that 20 pound comfort zone. I knew that if I just did an average job of eating right that I would never achieve maximum potential. I think that is also true in many other patterns in my life. I never felt that I really had to be anyone special because at the time I didn’t feel special. I felt dirty, unattractive and like a loner. I didn’t think there was anyone who could relate to how I felt about abandonment issues I suffered from an early age. Many times I just wanted to curl up into a corner and let the world pass me by.

Do you have trouble differentiating between emotional hunger and physical hunger? Describe
a time when you may have mistaken emotional hunger for physical hunger.What was happening at the time to make you emotionally hungry? Why didn’t you deal with it directly, instead of using food? This is a good question in relation to boredom eating. I sometimes do eat when I am bored. I just eat because well I am not hungry I just eat to have something to do. I did this last weekend and just felt horrible about it the next day. My son and I had been out and about and we had just had a bag each of M and M’s. Well ok I was physically hungry at that point, but then I had kept promising my son a hot fudge sundae and well mom couldn’t get the kiddo something and not get herself something. Yeah you can see where this is going. I got an ice cream too just because I wanted something to do while he was eating his ice cream. I sometimes catch myself snacking at meetings because well it is there and the people who prepared it for us worked so hard to fix it. Yup I grew up in the household that you ate what was on your plate and you also didn’t leave much leftovers or they became the meal for the next day. There again old habits from the past carry over into adulthood. I don’t do that so much now. I used to take seconds growing up just to not to have to eat leftovers the next day or try and get a second helping before my brothers got one. Now if it is leftover it is ok with my son eating at school all week I have to have something to eat for lunch so now I am cool with leftovers. Now actually I did do very good this past week dealing with my emotions instead of going to the fridge or cupboards to find something to snack on. I was upset about his father finding a loophole around a warrant for his arrest and I could have done any number of things but instead I got online and chatted to my friends in order to keep my mind from going to food. I am working on that it is going to be an ongoing issue with me.

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For the next part of this assignment we are asked to write a story to ourselves as to why we will not follow the teachings in this book to change our lives. Kind of a way of identifying what we use for cop outs when we don’t want to acknowledge what we are doing isn’t working.

This is what I had to say

The reasons I fail to effectively deal with these issues are few and are cop outs actually instead of reasons. I don’t want to work through this because I don’t want to look weak even to myself. Crying is or at least was told to be a sign of weakness in my house growing up. There is also the one statement on page 28 that I seem to use a lot”Compared to what we could have had to endure, we aren’t doing so badly.” I seem to fall back on this one quite often. I always minimize what I have gone through because maybe it seems safer that way. If I keep minimizing it enough it just looks like another fact to life that some just have to go through. It is also my way of controlling what happened to me by not fully acknowledging the impact it had on me. Yes the “It’s too hard” resonates with me as well. I don’t want to deal with the emotional roller coaster I know this will put me on. That is the main reason I fail time and time again. I don’t want to deal with it> I want to feel normal in light of my abnormal past. I know I am not normal though so that is even more reason to work on what I have to work on.

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I am revisiting this book because there are still strategies I need to continue to work on in order to get things right in my head and get strong for the pending release of my sons father from prison this month.

In this assignment we are asked to challenge our beliefs, by listing in order of significance the top five things in our life that we have simply failed to fully or completely acknowledge to ourselves.

The list that I had made when I originally sat down to do this what seems like a year ago now is as follows:

1.  Failing to work on feelings associated with the sexual abuse at my grandfathers hands
2. Failing to deal with my actions of starting the fire when I was 10 years old
3. Regrets over not being there in my grandmothers final moments
4. Wishing I had enough guts to do what is needed to put some closure on my dads death
5. Failing to work on my feelings of self worth

Sitting here looking at this list now I would have to say that the list has changed somewhat and now looks more like:

1. Failing to deal with the sexual, physical and verbal abuse at the hands of my grandfather
2. Failing to deal with being raped twice
3. Failing to come to terms as to the true reason I gave my first son up for adoption
4. Failing to deal with the physical and verbal abuse from Jeff and Wayne
5. Failing to deal with feeling of abandonment at an early age and all the things that happened to me as a result of that abandonment- this includes dealing with the triple whammy of being taken away, having to go to my dads funeral, and then going right back into the foster homes we were placed not less than three days before. This also includes my mom ditching us when I was 7. This also includes the deaths of several key loved ones who showed me kindness and caring in an uncertain time in my life.

Looking back at the list I made first I can not change not being able to be there when my grandmother breathed her last breath. I had maintained almost a steady two week vigil at her bedside off and on and dealing with being a a newly single parent as I had just left his father earlier that year. I can’t change the fact I didn’t check to make sure the ringer on my cell phone was set to ring instead of vibrate and missed the call to get to the hospital. So I need to stop beating myself up over this.

The other things though all contribute to my feeling of self worth and that even though I am enjoying certain successes in life right now I still don’t feel like I am good enough or worthy enough of these moments of success.

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To be body confident for me means to be comfortable with what I see when I look in the mirror. I am not the classic overweight person. I have 20 lbs to lose tops. At one time I found something that worked and then they took it off the market. It was ephedra. I lost 10 lbs while I was on the Metabolife shakes that had the ephedra in them. I have been struggling to find something else that will help me lose the weight as nicely as the ephedra products did. One trick that I have benefited from is the removal of all my FAT clothes. Once I started losing the weight I lost the FAT clothes as well. So when I feel my jeans getting a little snug that is my reminder to back off of the bad eating habits and regroup.

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As school is now upon me I am going to be doing a series on Wednesday’s  called  Inner Wisdom Wednesday’s in which I will pick at random a card from my Inner Wisdom deck of cards by Dr. Dwayne W. Dryer. They have a motivational quote on the front of the card and a brief insight as to the meaning of the quote on the back.

The first quote is… drum roll please…..

“My positive thoughts create a positive life”- You can reshape your thinking so that you never have to think in negatives again. You and only you choose your thoughts.

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I had to take a bit of a break from the self analysis because well quite frankly going back into my childhood and rehashing some of the recent stuff from the not too distant past takes an emotional toll on me and while writing does help keep me from turning into an emotional eater I still get drained from trying to deal with it.

To this day I still feel dirty when I think of what my grandfather did to me and it makes me angry that he did it to me. My grandfather,my mom, my oldest brother and both abusive, alcoholic ex boyfriends are the reasons I find it hard to trust anyone which brings me to the first question of Chapter 6.

1. Do you have someone you trust, someone who will never tell what comes up during an angry spat, someone who can listen with understanding-someone you can vent to?

I had to take some time and really think about this question as I do not trust myself when I get angry. I am on a high enough dosage of Zoloft that it pretty much tampers most of my negative feelings. If I can’t trust myself to get angry I don’t trust myself to get angry around other people and I don’t have that many people I consider close enough to let them ever see that side of me. I know I let a lot of people see the informative, intelligent, up with the latest info yadda yadda here and over on my other blog and other places I reside in on the internet but to show anyone my vulnerable, scared, and angry side is something I try to sheild those who follow me on the internet and in my personal life from. Actually I live alone with my son. I also decided not to get into another relationship right now.

My existence offline is really rather a hermit like existence. I have to force myself to get out every day and see the outside world and if I didn’t have my son I would hardly ever venture out. Why? I feel at times I really don’t fit in anywhere. I know I am not alone in the world when it comes to sexual abuse and a history with alcoholic abusers, however, there is something in an abuse survivors head that will linger for the rest of their lifetime telling them they aren’t good enough for anyone because they are unclean or unwanted. I think that is one reason why I have turned to a higher power. My choice is the Christian God. I know that some may not or will not listen past this point, but well there is something within the Bible that resonates with me. Since I have become leader of my WELCA group and have been studying this Bible study series I have seen that Jesus and God don’t care about the color of your skin, what you have done, or what has been done to you, they only care about you.

Now mind you it is still taking me time to really wrap my head around this and I am not about forcing my beliefs on anyone what I am about it trying to find something to believe in. Which by the way that was also a song by Poison released in 1990, the year I graduated from high school three months pregnant.

I wanted so badly to find something to make sense of what was going on in my world at that time and I am still trying to make sense of it. I know there is a reason why I have gone through what I have and why I still continue to struggle. It isn’t clear at times but I have seen things happen and for folks who have led a less traumatic life it cripples them when a major crisis hits for the first time. I,however,am the calm in the storm for them. I have been through whatever it is they are going through. So I can then move into a position of strength for them when they need it.

2. Have you ever turned a frustrating event into a funny story?

Well now now that is an answer I would have to really think about. I am not sure which frustrating event in my life would merit trying to make light of. I guess it could be all the aggravations I have had with my car. Now that has been an adventure of sorts since owning it. I have had nearly $2000 in repairs done to the engine and the electrical system and the brakes because well my ex boyfriend and his friend are shade tree mechanics at best. Neither one of them are certified mechanics.

3. When you are facing a tough day how do you feel after you pray about it?

I tend not to really pray about something I kind of mull it over and try to figure out how to handle it. I look at it this way I can either get angry about it or I can figure out someway to move through it and past it so it doesn’t consume me. I have to do that now more than ever because I don’t feel good when I let myself sink into depression. I get this overwhelming sense of fatigue and then I just want to sleep or shrink inside myself and then I lose the ability to be productive. So I have to NOT let the smallest set back get in my road.

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I Found this little quiz on the FTC’s website in their section about supplements. I missed one but considering I have been going to college I shouldn’t have missed any.

Take the following quiz to find out where you stack up.

If you want graded so to speak comment and leave me your answers. I have the master grading scale. I would provide the answers at the bottom like they do with the kiddy meals at restaurants and other things like cereal boxes and stuff, but I want you to really think about the answers and maybe seek out the knowledge yourself. There is empowerment in learning for yourself especially when it comes to your health.

Test Your Supplement Savvy

Advertised throughout the media, displayed in grocery stores and pharmacies, and promoted widely on the Internet, dietary supplements look like just another consumer product on the shelf. But are they? Take this quiz to find out how much you know about using dietary supplements safely.

1. A supplement labeled “natural” means that it also is:
   

   1. mild
   2. without any risk of side effects
   3. safe to use with other medications
   4. none of the above

2. Since dietary supplements are so easily available — and don’t require a doctor’s prescription — they are much safer than drug products and can be used to self-treat illnesses without a health professional’s advice or supervision.
   

   True or False

3. Testimonials in dietary supplement promotions give a good idea of the supplement’s benefits and safety because they’re based on firsthand accounts.
   

   True or False

4. Many supplements have proven health benefits.
   

   True or False

5. Before you start taking a dietary supplement, talk it over with a knowledgeable person like:
   

   1. your doctor or health professional
   2. your pharmacist
   3. a supplement salesperson
   4. a friend who takes them

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