12 Weeks out

Wow, so this is a wee bit late but like I said before, I'm not much of a blogger and time slipped away.  Here are some noteable changes and updates since last progress post. 

Todd made a couple of changes 3 weeks ago.  Reduced my carbs to 100grams per day and added one hour of lunges on the treadmill, once a week.  Yes, you heard me right, 1 HOUR of lunges on the treadmill.  Hello glutes!  I told Todd the first 10 minutes I lived in what I named, "The Profanitarium" - learning new curse words. To get through the lunges I decided to work in 10 minute incremements giving myself 1 minute or so to stop and drink water.  By the time I got to 40 minutes I was able to ignore the gawking from the bystanders and realized that it wasn't so bad.  I was pleased that the next day I could feel the workout in my glutes!

My body, the laboratory:  One thing I've learned is to become more self-aware of the small changes that are occuring and to not stress out if the scale doesn't move.  I've stayed at 125 pounds but I have gotten leaner.  Todd thinks it possible that I may have increased muscle while becoming lean.  I continue to maintain strength and energy.

Planning my food: Probably the biggest learning curve for me lately is self-discipline. Since I don't have a wife and regardless of how tired or lazy I am, I MUST prep my food for the week - on Sunday.  It is NOT fun running to the store in 115 degree heat, drive to the stores that have the cheapest ground turkey breast, or the best chicken breast or even the cheapest egg whites.  But I have to make myself do it regardless of how I "feel".  I have had to push through fatigue and irritiblity but mostly laziness.  Sundays has always been MY day where I just allow myself to sit on the couch and just be still. 

It usually takes me 2 - 3 hours including weighing, measuring and storing my food.  I have learned what works best for me - keeping it simple.  Cooking does not come naturally for me... I have always enjoyed cooking but only when I have time to plan and it is for a special occasion.  I look at food as fuel for the next few months and not something to "enjoy."  It works for me, for now!

Each week I rotate 3 carb choices with my protein.  I cook up either yams, quinoa or brown rice, enough for a week (6 meals per day equaling 100gms).  I have learned to eye-ball what 12 grams of carbs looks like.  I store it in a ziplock bag ready to throw in my cooler to take to work.  Next I choose my protein for the week: Fish (tilapia), turkey, or chicken.  I am intentional with "real protein" because "real food" is better for me than protein powder (and protein powder is expensive!)."  I either recruit my husband to cook my chicken on the grill, or I suck it up and fire up the George Foreman grill and cook everything either with that, bake in the oven, or use my rice cooker to steam my meat.

Progress Pics -  (taken August 6th)

Today I am grateful for what God has done in my life. He has taken a broken shame-based woman hating every part of who she was and transformed her into something completely different. 

I am thankful that I have the time to focus and workout.  I am learning a new type of self-discipline with food, pushing my cravings of my flesh aside for a larger goal.

What are you thankful for?  What area of your life needs more self-discipline?  How will you be intentional in moving towards healthy and sustaining changes? 

This Friday will be the end of Phase II.  I will have more pics of progress then.  Stay tuned.

1981

I can remember almost every minute of it, the day my reality changed forever. I was sitting in my dorm room my sophomore year in college.  I was thinking about my boyfriend joining the Army.  I look back now and still wonder what really caused it.  Was it flawed genetics?  Childhood trauma? PTSD?

 I still wonder why this was to be my thorn in my flesh:  The one thing that drew me to God; the one thing that still to this day keeps me dependent upon Him?

I was laying on my bed. Out of nowhere I felt myself leaving my body. I thought I was dying.  My heart was racing, and the closest word to describe - dizzy.  For some reason I grabbed my throat and my roomate panicked.  She thought I was choking.  She asked if she should call 911.  Eventually the dizziness went away but what was left was a surreal feeling of being in a dream.  The experts call it detachment.  I happened to be in an abnormal psychology class and stumbled across symptoms that somewhat described the sensations that took place that day.  Panic.  What it didn't describe was the intense feeling of living in a dream, not in reality. 

It wasn't until much later that I learned what was really wrong with me.  Depersonalization disorder or Derealization disorder. 

Depersonalization disorder symptoms include:

• Continuous or recurring feelings that you're an outside observer of your thoughts, your body or parts of your body
• Numbing of your senses or responses to the world around you
• Feeling like a robot or feeling like you're living in a dream or in a movie
• The sensation that you aren't in control of your actions, including speaking
• Awareness that your sense of detachment is only a feeling, and not reality

Other symptoms can include:

• The sense that your body, legs or arms appear distorted, enlarged or shrunken
• Feeling like you are observing yourself from above, as if you were floating in the air
• Feeling emotionally disconnected from people you care about

If I think too hard about what I feel and experience on a day to day basis it becomes too overwhelming.  I look in the mirror and see a stranger.  That is probably the most difficult area I have had to manage.  I don't see me, rather a different person.

I have had to find ways to FEEL REAL and grounded in reality.

So why am I talking about this? Because it's time I start talking about it.  And, probably because it helps me justify some of this crazy things I get myself into.  For example; a figure competition, at age 50.

• I have learned that physical exersice has been one of the most soothing ways to cope with living in a dream.  For some reason pushing my physical body to extreme allows me to feel real - to feel, for a brief amount of time, connected to reality.

• I could probably start an entire blog on how I have learned to stand strong.  But I will stop and give thanks to God for giving me a tenacious fighting resilient spirit.  I could have checked out long ago but I made a decision to fight this.

• I kept this under wraps up until today.  Maybe it was pride, not wanting people to look at me differently.  Maybe embarrassement.  Or, maybe I wanted to be perceived as normal.  Whatever it maybe be, welcome to my world.

Stay tuned, my next blog will have updated pictures of my progress, workouts, and nutrition changes.