So here we are, 17.5 months after I started working out. I always say that I didn't lose the 75 lbs, that it was all somehow given to me. That it was easy. One day the cravings just stopped and the working out just starting, like flipping a light switch.
I got to 130 lbs and I'm back up to 140 lbs. I've been gaining and losing these same 10 lbs for months now. I've gotten to 130 lbs twice and then back up. Down, up. So now I'm at 75 lbs lost from 215lbs on 7/3/09.
I used to, a long time ago, eat four hamburgers at a time. 20 cheese sticks. Two McDonalds Breakfast Deluxes (not all at the same time, each one of those was a meal). I'd get this urge and I'd drive to the drive-through and it was like I couldn't stop myself even if I wanted to. All that stopped on 7/3/09.
These past few weeks I've been getting this hunger that I can't seem to satiate or stop. Yesterday I have 10 fiber bars, about 200-300 grapes, and 3 boxed meals. I'd say about 2500 calories. And no exercise. So that's about 700 calories over. I haven't had a deficit in over a week. Eat, eat, eat. The feeling that I can't stop myself. And the vertigo medicine is making me feel not sleepy, but so exhausted that I can't get out of bed. Although it takes the symptoms away completely, it makes me so tired that I stay in bed anyway. I see the specialist in 8 days so at least there's an end in sight regarding the vertigo. Or at least a checkpoint. Hope.
I thought it was the vertigo medicine that was making me feel hungry but I'd stop it for two days, enough to rid my system of it according to the balance center, and the hunger is still there.
It's as if someone said, here, we got you to 140 lbs. Now we're leaving, and you'll be left at the same point as you were before, with that hunger and inability to stop eating and dragging yourself to exercise. Have fun! It's as if someone gave me training wheels and now they're being taken off and I have to take it from here. And you know what I decided it will take from here? Courage. Because I have to believe I'm strong enough to resist the eating urges.
It's like the depression. Let me tell you a story of how I "beat" depression. From the time I was 10 to the time I was 31, 21 years. It affected every area of my life. I had to drop classes in college because of it. It affected jobs. Everything. Then one day I was behind someone important to me and they had hurt their foot. And we were walking back to our car with this group of people from working out in the river. And I told her she could lean on me and I'd help her back. She said no, of course. She was too tough for that. It was actually one of the qualities I liked most about her. So there I am, walking behind her, looking at her feet moving and double-stepping now and then through the pain. I will never forget those minutes. It's like when time stands still. And I thought to myself, that if I want someone to lean on me, they have to, at least for that specific moment in time, feel that I am stronger than them. It's just common sense, if you lean on something weaker than you, it breaks and you fall. You lean on a wall that will stand your weight. You lean on a person that can, at that moment in time, hold you up. So then I started thinking that I wanted her to feel like she could lean on me so I had to be strong enough in her eyes for that. And then I started wondering what that entailed. And all this internal dialogue took a couple of minutes at most. And it was then that I decided that I would never be depressed again. Not that I couldn't be depressed again, but that I wouldn't. (that for me is a huge difference) And it has been months and I haven't been depressed since. Those first few weeks I'd feel myself getting depressed, and I'd say out loud "No, Debbie." I'd be in the car, pop open the mirror (parked), look into my eyes, and say "No, Debbie." Out loud. I haven't had to do that lately, now I just don't get depressed. After 21 years, it was ironically that easy.
What makes something happen at a specific moment in time?
