Starting all over again

The last two weeks haven't been the greatest.  I honestly haven't had the energy to do this.  And making this change takes energy.  I have to stop each time I'm about to eat and check, whats in it, can I eat it, what would be a better alternative.  Its no longer just grab something and eat it.  I know that eventually it will be that way again because I will know what I should and should not eat.  Ive let myself down.  I find it amazing how good I was feeling, my clothes were fitting better and I had so much energy.  Today I put on a pair of pants that were so comfortable last week and today they are just a little too tight. We are at the end of our rope financially, but today we put things into motion that will hopefully end that.  I'm hoping that without the money stress Michael and I can start to heal our relationship.  We are so stressed with everything and our biggest worry is will we lose our house.  Luckily we were able to find a fix so with the stress level going way down maybe we can address some of the other things that are problems in our marriage. 

So back to my makeover, back to putting my energy into making this change.  Back to seeing Dr. Os and Dr. Patti, I'm looking forward to it, I miss seeing them each week.  Ive got my recipes and shopping list for next week and I'm ready to go.

Painful Lesson Learned

Last Wednesday I started everything sugar free.  It was hard and my mood swings started to get pretty awful.  There is sugar in everything, everything, everything...  It was overwhelming to start the process but I read through the meal plans I was given and dove in.  I made the trips to the grocery store and got all the stuff.  Even the kids were talking about healthy food.  (But they obviously didn't get it when Kaitlin brought me a box of gummies and said "these are healthy" and dropped them into the cart).  Gotta love her, shes always trying to get something by me.  So for 4 days I ate well, no sugar, lots of veggies etc.  Then I had a craptastic Friday and Saturday and something in me snapped.

Ive always known that I am an emotional eater.  When things are shitty (sorry about the language Dr Patti!) i tend to head for the refrigerator and look for something creamy and sweet to eat.  This hasn't changed.  By Saturday night I had eaten 6 mini brownies and had 2 cokes.  I had no willpower!  I was just expecting to feel the same satisfaction that I used to feel when I would eat that way when things were bad.  But the thing is it never came.  I just felt guilty and yucky, and disappointed in myself.  I had gone 1 month without having soda and in the blink of an eye I had consumed 2 and basically wasted all of my efforts from the past month. 
By Sunday morning I felt even worse.  Mentally I was the same, just disappointed but physically I was sick.  My stomach hurt, i couldn't stay out of the bathroom and I was so bloated.  Who knew that even after just a couple of days of getting this stuff out of my system putting it back in would be so painful?  Lesson learned!!!  Painful lesson learned.  But a good lesson learned.  I need to find a different outlet for my emotional eating.  Not sure what that is yet, but at least I'm aware of it. 

By Monday I was back on track but it took until Tuesday night for me to finally feel better.  I find it amazing how the body works....I've been eating sugar all my life but with just 4 days without it my body was already feeling more healthy. 

I know this road is long and hard and there will be times when I will make a wrong decision.  But the lessons learned will only help me get stronger.

Motivation Needed

Do you ever just feel like everything is coming down around you and you don't know what to do?  Or how you will ever get through it all?  While I'm working on making these changes for my health, other areas of my life are crashing down around me and I seriously feel like I'm drowning.  And being overwhelmed with the other stuff has caused me to lose some of my motivation for my healthy changes.  There is only so much of me to go around and I feel helpless because of it. After getting laid off last year I sank into a "funk" of sorts.  Just feeling hopeless and as my unemployment dragged on it got worse.  All in all I was without a job for a little over a year and mentally and financially it took its toll on me and my family.  We struggled to pay the kids tuition, we struggled to buy the groceries, we struggled to pay our mortgage and we fell behind on a lot of these things.  Now I am back to work, but we still struggle daily.  When does it end?  When do we catch up?  I am so completely tired of worrying about our finances.  Will we lose our house?  Do we need to pull the kids out of preschool?  We just got paid last week, how can we already be overdrawn?  And we don't get paid until next Friday.  Its a losing battle and I am losing the motivation to keep trying and fighting.  Why can't I get it together?  Too bad I can just come across some cash somewhere, you know like in the movies....nothing like real life.  Now I need to figure out how to come up with $2k this week.  God, I feel like a loser.

So with all of that going on in my head I'm finding it hard to wrap myself around anything else.  But I know that I need to work on the healthy lifestyle.  This week the plan is go to sugar free.  We eat way too much sugar everyday.  And not just in candy and sweets, we eat a lot of processed sugar in our food.  The thought is very overwhelming though, how do you cut it all out?  My doctors are both great leaders for me and they have helped me out so much with meal plans and the things I need to succeed in this endeavour.  I just need to remember that I can do it.

Sorry about the money rant in the first paragraph, but it consumes 99% of my thoughts and it effects my motivation for a lot of other things.

Milestone:  1 month without soda, so far its good, although I do still crave it from time to time.