Plans, Perserverance, Acceptance

 Over the holidays I slacked off quite a bit on my overall eating and health plan. It definitely affected both my weight (as evidenced with the five pound gain over the past three months) and with how I felt.

• My blood sugar went back up, to unacceptable levels. I'm still playing around with the insulin I take, trying to take as little as possible while still keeping my sugars at a healthy level. It's really hard. My sugars right now vary between the low 100s (110's at the low end) to the high 200s (270s at the high end) throughout the day. I'm playing with diet, exercise, AND insulin... it's crazy. I was dealing with highs upon waking up until this week; now I am dealing with normal fasting sugars but random peaks throughout the day. I also don't feel great when this is going on... I vary between fatigue / sluggishness and dizziness. 
• A lot of my gastrointestinal issues were cropping back up. I am pretty sure this is gluten-related. It was overwhelming to be gluten free during the holidays and I gave up on it a lot of the time, leading me to cycle between constipation and diarrhea. I would also have periodic bouts with stomach pain. My acid reflux came back last month. I have been gluten free again for a few weeks and I'm feeling much better.
• My hair started falling out again. This was something that has been happening for a few years now, and while it was alarming at times - the sheer amount of hair I would pull out every time I showered - I have been blessed with a LOT of hair to spare and I wasn't BALD, my hair was just a lot thinner. I wrote it off as a post-having kids thing and/or a diabetes thing. When it stopped happening last summer I didn't really notice... but when it started happening AGAIN it became pretty clear to me that it, too, was probably gluten related! My hair loss over the past week, now that I'm gluten free again, has been pretty minimal.
• I had more frequent headaches and bouts of fatigue over the holidays. The fatigue was nowhere near as bad as it had been at the start of 2012 but I could feel it creeping back in at times.
• And of course, my weight started creeping back up.

I'm not really doing The Blood Sugar Solution plan, per se, anymore. There are definite positive things I have taken away from it - the elimination diet and discovering how much better I feel without gluten, for one. There are others I'm not so sure about - the vast amount of supplements, for one. I've cut a lot of them out - I didn't really notice a huge difference in how I felt, and as I do more research over time, there's just so much conflicting data on what each one actually DOES and whether or not they are really effective that it's a tough call to make. I've stuck with a multivitamin, omega-3's, probiotics, and fiber supplements... and until I run out I'm going to continue taking the "Healthy Blood Sugar" supplement I picked up from Vitacost. I don't plan on buying more of it though, unless my blood sugar changes drastically when I stop taking them!

Diet wise I am, obviously, eating gluten free right now. I'm still working to find a good balance between healthy, easy, not time-consuming, appealing to me, and cost effective. It's really hard, much harder than I think food SHOULD be. I'm sure I'll expand more on this topic as time goes on. I'm trying to streamline meals as much as possible, while trying the occasional new thing to hopefully expand our repertoire a little bit.

Exercise - I'm picking that back up. Slacked a good amount over the holidays. Contemplating working my way up to my own "Biggest Loser" type exercise plan to kickstart my weight loss. I will see how that pans out for me and, of course, report in on it too.

That's pretty much it. In the grand scheme of things, we know there's no magic pills... with RARE exceptions, it's calories in, calories out. I've also come to terms a LOT more over the past year that the TYPE of calories you put in matter. I've been staunchly denying that for years, but the more I learn, and the more I experiment with my own health, the more I realize I simply have to accept it as true. I've not just accepted it, I've even made a lot of peace with that over the past year - it was really hard for me, for a long time, to say "No one should eat this food" or "I shouldn't eat this type of food". Even after it was becoming readily apparent, I still wanted to rage against the injustice of it. I'm pretty much through with, for lack of a better term, the stages of grief over food. I don't always love the restrictions but I'm not angry or in denial anymore. I focus on what I CAN eat, not what I can't.

I slip up, I pick myself up, I start over again.

2013 State Of The Weight

That weight, it just wants to keep on creeping!


My weight officially climbed back up to 223 over the holidays. My lowest point prior to was 218, so a five pound gain over the past three months. Weight loss isn't linear; even people on The Biggest Loser have weeks where they gain!

The holidays are tough, and for me the struggle begins in October - Halloween is my favorite holiday, and there are so many delicious treats that go along with it. Apple and pumpkin EVERYTHING, and all the candy. Fall is a great time to start baking too.
Thanksgiving isn't terribly hard for me - it's just one day, and we don't go to a lot of parties or anything.
December is a little tougher, with a few parties and Christmas cookies and the holiday itself.
My husband's birthday is January 1st so New Year's always brings a few indulgences too.
After struggling through October, I decided I was going to give myself a little break and just try to maintain. A five pound gain isn't the worst thing in the world. If I was at a healthy weight it wouldn't really matter at all, as long as I got back into my healthy habits after the season ended!

Overall, I lost 13.6 pounds last year. I feel better than I did at the beginning of last year too. I'm recommitted to my goals and I am going to keep moving forward! I'd like to see a lot more weight come off this year, now that I have a better handle on what works for my body.

Still, it sucks when those numbers creep up.

(Don't forget you can check out progress pictures at my weight loss Tumblr!)

Progress Report

I'm behind in posting. It's getting harder and harder to devote so much of my day to being healthy. I lobe feeling better and losing weight, don't get me wrong - but this lifestyle change takes up a LOT of my time and the longer it goes on, the more things get pushed to the side. Things like cleaning my house, working on my business ideas, even taking care of my family. Finding a balance is hard. This isn't news to any adult alive, I'm sure. I'm still working on that balancing act. (Has anyone actually got it figured out? Because if you do, SHARE WITH US. You could sell that formula and make a fortune.) In the meantime, I haven't given up! I'm not doing it perfectly; but then again, who amongst us is perfect? I just take a page from Cub Scouts, and from what we tell our kids almost every day - just Do Your Best.

Technically I'm in the middle of week four... in a nutshell, week three was making time for relaxation every day and making sure you get proper sleep. I have found it's really difficult, for me at least, to make time for relaxation! I want to just rush through it and GO GO GO on to the next thing on my to do list. I think that's kind of missing the point though. Anyone else have this same problem?
Week four is to add in exercise you enjoy. Ideally cardio, strength training, AND 30-60 minutes of stretching at least twice a week. This is another thing that's tough to fit into every day life. I know exercise should be a priority but I'm still working on that. More on that later.

As I muddle through all this, here's a progress report. (Past progress reports can be found here, for reference.)

Weight - 219
Waist Size - 46.25"
Blood Pressure - haven't tested since last time
BMI - my BMI is 35.3. I'm still obese!
Waist To Height Ratio - .69 (This website says "Take Action!") Dr. Hyman says "this number is a better predictor of diabesity, heart disease, and risk of death than almost any other number."
Hemoglobin A1C - haven't tested since last time
Cholesterol - haven't tested since last time


Insulin- my sugars were creeping a little higher than I liked; fine during the day but getting too high for my fasting. I have added in one shot, my Levemir (slow acting insulin). I am currently taking 25 units each night. My fasting is better - some days ok, some days too high. Daytime blood sugars have still been fine. I continue to monitor regularly.

PLEASE keep going down! I've only had one spike up since I started this, and though it was short-lived it was not a fun time.

I'm right on the cusp of my lowest weight in a long time. For the past several years I've made it down to this weight (219), but never made it past it. I used to go to TOPS - Take Off Pounds Sensibly. I went for about three years. I can't tell you how many times I hit this weight while I was going. I used to bounce regularly between 219 - 225 or so. The beginning of this year saw me at my highest weight EVER - 236.4. Ouch. I've lost 17.4 pounds this year. 10.4 of that has been since August, when I changed my diet drastically. I'm scared I'm going to have some sudden random weight gain and it'll be really discouraging. I really want to get past it forever and never see it again. I haven't been below this weight in at least five years! My daughter (my youngest child) will be six in three weeks. I was right around 220 when I delivered her. I know I lost weight after I had her; I think I got down to about 210 sometime in her first year, and then I went back up to around 220. I stayed in the upper 220's for most of her life, until this year when I crept into the mid-230's. When I GOT pregnant with her I weighed 190. So my intermediate goals kind of coincide with my pregnancies and deliveries... ultimately I'd like to get to at least 175 and then re-evaluate where I'm at. On the way there, my goals are kind of as follows:
218 - because I haven't seen it since Oksana was one or so (5 years ago)
210 - because I haven't seen it since the first year of Oksana's life (5.5 years ago)

190 - the weight I was when I got pregnant with Oksana (6.5 years ago)
180 - the weight I was when I got pregnant with Drake (8.75 years ago)
175 - the weight my doctor told me I needed to be before we should talk about me getting pregnant again (about 9 years ago)

170 is the lowest I recall ever being as an adult. That's where I was when I met my husband (9.25 years ago).

And we'll see what happens after that.

Other indicators of progress:

I can't really SEE it myself yet - despite losing 17.4 pounds this year, since I see myself every day, I don't think I look much different yet. However, I just saw a friend yesterday who hasn't seen me in 2-3 months and she complimented me and said she could definitely see it. And other friends have told me they can tell too. That's always nice to hear.

Clothes - yesterday I wore a pair of jeans that have always fit snugly on me. I could get into them but they were always really tight and never wanted to stay on my ass. They still kind of ride down a bit (I think that's just part of the cut of this particular pair of jeans) but I got into them with no struggle and they stayed on all day comfortably. Today I am wearing a pair of capris that are a size 16. They are a fairly elastic size 16 - I was able to wear them in the past when everything else was a size 18 - but I haven't been able to get into them in about a year. I haven't really noticed a difference as far as my shirts go yet, though I have noticed that most of the time when I look down, I don't see my belly sticking out past my boobs anymore. That's nice.
Current clothing sizes - shirts are still pretty much extra large. Pants are mostly a size 18.

Picture Time!

Me in March of this year, at our Cub Scouts Blue and Gold Dinner.

Me yesterday morning, helping to pack up books to send to a school in Africa so they can have a library. Those are the jeans I mentioned.

Me yesterday, holding a pipe wrench I brought to a friend's OMGWTFBBQ.

Health Progress - Numbers And Such

As of 9/23, from this post:

Weight - 219
Waist Size - 46.25"
Blood Pressure - haven't tested since last time
BMI - my BMI is 35.3. I'm still obese!
Waist To Height Ratio - .69 (This website says "Take Action!")
Hemoglobin A1C - haven't tested since last time
Cholesterol - haven't tested since last time


Insulin- my sugars were creeping a little higher than I liked; fine during the day but getting too high for my fasting. I have added in one shot, my Levemir (slow acting insulin). I am currently taking 25 units each night. My fasting is better - some days ok, some days too high. Daytime blood sugars have still been fine. I continue to monitor regularly.

Current clothing sizes - shirts extra large. Pants size 18. 

Picture from 09/22/12.

 As of 8/24/12, from this post, here are some numbers:

Weight - Right now it is 222. A month ago it was 229. At the beginning of this year it was 236.4; the most I've ever weighed.
 Height - 5'6"
Waist Size - Right now it's 47.5". At the beginning of the year it was 50.5".
Blood Pressure - I used a machine to test it while we were on vacation. It was 105/70 and my pulse rate was 78. In June it was 126/7- with a pulse rate of 80. In May it was 122/80.
BMI - my BMI is 35.8. I'm obese!
Waist To Height Ratio - .70 (This website says "Take Action!") Dr. Hyman says "this number is a better predictor of diabesity, heart disease, and risk of death than almost any other number."

• my last Hemoglobin A1C ( a few months ago now) was over TEN. Abnormal is greater than 5.5. Ten is REALLY out of control.
• My total cholesterol, last time we tested (a few months ago), was 257 (ideal is less than 180). My HDL cholesterol was 44 (ideal is higher than 60). My triglycerides were 460 (ideal is less than 100).
• I've got fatty liver disease.
• We tested my thyroid last spring and it came back normal.

Also I'm not currently taking ANY of my insulin (I also stopped my Victoza) and my blood sugar has been good. I'm testing multiple times throughout the day and the numbers are always between 100 - 120. My fasting blood sugar is too high; it was 154 today, and 160 yesterday.

08/25/12; my friend Leslie on the left (she's lost 102 pounds this year!), me on the right.

As of 07/19/12 I'm 7 pounds down and my blood sugar is under control. I still have a long way to go, and it's slow going so far, but I'm seeing bits of progress and that's encouraging.

At my friend Tina's wedding, June 2012.

I Found My Book!

There was great rejoicing in the land! It appeared mysteriously on my family room floor this morning. I went down to clean / search for it for another half hour and... there it was. So let's play some catch-up here:

I left for vacation while still in the midst of prep week one. I continued to follow the food rules but didn't finish any of the other prep week tasks or tackle anything new. Here's what I didn't finish:

Prepare Your Community

He wants you to join his online site, prepare a support group for yourself with friends, family, and co workers (and try to get them to do the program with you), set boundaries if you have food pushers in your life, and get involved socially and politically at www.takebackourhealth.org .

I am not joining his website. Not because it's bad or anything, just because... it's another step I don't have time for. I've done sparkpeople.com (an excellent site) and teambeachbody.com and others in the past too and have learned that, while I love blogging and I HAVE made lasting online friendships with people this way... I just don't have the time to devote to building lasting relationships with online weight loss friends. I'm more of an introvert so unless an online friendship grows organically over several avenues and time, I'm just not that motivated by strangers and to me it's just another obligation. Support is VITAL, so if this works for you don't skip it, but for me I'll get my support in other areas.

Friends and family... no one is doing the program with me but I have lots of friends and family who are working their own ways to get / stay healthy, and even those that aren't are very supportive. Blogging is great... it seems quite a few of my folks are following along too because I get lots of comments and support in real life as I run into people. Talking about it with everyone is a HUGE source of support and it keeps me on track too!
I also use some tools on my iPhone that have a social structure as well. My two favorite health apps right now are My Fitness Pal and Nexercise.

My Fitness Pal is a food and exercise tracker with a social vibe. I've tried others in the past but keep coming back to this one for two main reasons:

1) Their database of foods (caloric and nutritional values) is HUGE. I've only had to add recipes I make from scratch (I use sparkrecipes.com to calculate the nutritional value of the recipe).

that's the 'cereal' I made up for breakfast. It's actually pretty good.

2) I love the social side. I have a few friends who use it and every time I log in I am treated to their recent accomplishments. You can comment and encourage each other, too!

Leslie is SMOKIN' it!!

 If you use My Fitness Pal and would like to be friends, I'm MillionDreamMom there.

Nexercise is an app that lets you turn exercise into a fun game, and possibly even a competition with your friends. Every time you exercise you start the app, select the workout you are about to do, and hit 'start'.

They have loooootttts of exercises to choose from in their database.

 You earn points for exercising, with bonus points and titles for things like consistency, motion (the app will track motion if you tell it to), time, etc. If you add your friends then you can check the leaderboards to see who is accruing the most points, or give them a nudge if they haven't nexercised in a while! It's a fun and easy way to track my exercise time and I like competing with people so I enjoy that part.

Virtual medals don't really DO anything and yet they make me feel so accomplished!

It also looks like, in the most recent update, they're adding a new point system that might actually get you rewards in the real world, like amazon gift cards and such. I just saw this for the first time yesterday so it's new to me but I am intrigued! That's even MORE motivating!

I'm connected to Nexercise via Facebook so you'll either have to be my friend there or send me an email to connect with Nexercise if you use it. I'd love to have more people to compete with so please do!

As far as becoming socially and politically active... it's on my dream list. I do what I can but right now taking charge of my health and taking care of my family is pretty much a full time job. I dream of being a social and political crusader sometimes but I don't beat myself up for the things I don't do right now. Time is finite; we all do what we can.

Take Measure of Yourself - Track Your Numbers

You're supposed to start out by taking a bunch of measurements. I just ran out of time before vacation so I don't have all of them from the start, but I've taken a lot of these over the past year so I know most of them. Weight, Height, Waist Size, Blood Pressure, BMI, Waist To Height Ratio.
You're also supposed to complete the diabesity quiz(zes) to see if you are on the Basic or Advanced plan.
There's a set of diabesity tests he recommends as well, plus additional tests if you are Advanced.

In the spirit of full disclosure, and probably some oversharing, I'll share my starting numbers with the world. Why not, we're all human, right? It's not where I want to be but it's nothing to be ashamed of either.

Weight - Right now it is 222. A month ago it was 229. At the beginning of this year it was 236.4; the most I've ever weighed.
 Height - 5'6"
Waist Size - Right now it's 47.5". At the beginning of the year it was 50.5".
Blood Pressure - I used a machine to test it while we were on vacation. It was 105/70 and my pulse rate was 78. In June it was 126/7- with a pulse rate of 80. In May it was 122/80.
BMI - my BMI is 35.8. I'm obese!
Waist To Height Ratio - .70 (This website says "Take Action!") Dr. Hyman says "this number is a better predictor of diabesity, heart disease, and risk of death than almost any other number."

In case I didn't mention it, I'm on the Advanced plan. Advanced in this case is NOT a good thing. It means I'm extra sickly. It also means I'm more severely restricted on the foods I am allowed to eat for at least six weeks.

The blood and urine tests he recommends are:
Insulin response test, Hemoglobin A1C, NMR lipid profile, Lipid panel, Triglycerides / HDL ratio, Total cholesterol / HDL ratio, High sensitivity C-reactive protein, Fibrinogen, Lipoprotein, Uric acid, Liver function test, Kidney function test, microalbumin, 25 OH vitamin D, Homocysteine, Ferritin, Thyroid Hormones, and sex hormones. He has a free online guide - How To Work With Your Doctor To Get What You Need - with additional tips and info.
I'm already sort of in the middle of the plan and I already KNOW some of those things are WAY abnormal for me... I'm going to put it on my to-do list to get a physical and talk to my doctor about these tests in the near future.
I can tell you:

• my last Hemoglobin A1C ( a few months ago now) was over TEN. Abnormal is greater than 5.5. Ten is REALLY out of control.
• My total cholesterol, last time we tested (a few months ago), was 257 (ideal is less than 180). My HDL cholesterol was 44 (ideal is higher than 60). My triglycerides were 460 (ideal is less than 100).
• I've got fatty liver disease.
• We tested my thyroid last spring and it came back normal.

So. Now I've caught up with the last of the 'prep' stuff I was supposed to do before officially starting the six weeks. Which I kind of haven't really started counting anyway since I couldn't find the book! I'll write about week one... probably Sunday, because tomorrow I'm going to a Scrapbook Expo with my mom and some friends!

Life Just Keeps Getting In The Way

This morning, the kids started school (two hours, but hey, it's a start! First FULL day tomorrow!) and Zach flew home to Texas. I used that little bit of peace and quiet to sort of write out my personal goal list for the rest of this year and come up with a rough daily outline that will help me achieve it. It's chock full of stuff like get healthy, finish organizing the house and keep it clean, spend more time with the kids after school, have a better routine in place for the kids, get back on track with finances... fun things like that. I also decided that tomorrow, to coincide with my first full day of 'mom work' all by myself, I would begin counting the official six weeks of The Blood Sugar Solution advanced plan!

So naturally, I can't find my book ANYWHERE.

Last place I saw it was downstairs after vacation. I had it with me ON vacation and I know I took it down to look over before bed after we got back. I looked it over, decided it was going to be too chaotic to try to have anything resembling a schedule in place, and put it aside.

Then I had three kids running pell mell through the house for the next ten days. Also, my husband rearranged the furniture downstairs during that time. It's no wonder the book has disappeared!

I just spent half an hour cleaning down here while simultaneously looking for the book. No go. I'll keep looking for it because there are some general guidelines I know I need to follow during the official six weeks... and there were some other questions and things I wanted to blog about as well.

In the meantime, I'll just keep following the food plan. No flour, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no grains of ANY kind, no starchy vegetables, no fruit (except half a cup of berries a day). Hopefully I'll find the book tonight so I can work on AND blog in more detail about the rest of the process.

In total I've lost 14.4 pounds this year. Half of that is since I started this plan. I also feel a ton better. It's a bit rough overall but those things keep me going.