That thousand pound telephone

I'm doing pretty well so far on the commitments I made for myself that I posted on Sunday.  Yeah, I know it's only Tuesday, but let's see ...

• Pack my lunch/snacks the night before work for the next day. Done.
• Continuing to track every food I have in my WW tracker, no matter what. Done.
• Figuring out what I'll wear the night before so that I have plenty of time to eat breakfast in the morning and other things I need to do before heading out the door without rushing. Done.
• Setting up a fruit bowl on my dining room table which is where I will go for easy to grab snacks.  I might even consider doing one at work, too.  Done.
• Putting my workout clothes in see-through bins in my bedroom so that they are in plain sight as a reminder to exercise.  In fact, tomorrow I plan on bringing my clothes with me so that I can go for a workout on my way home from work. Done.
• At some point this week, I will look into scheduling an appointment to meet with a therapist through Kaiser. And a big fat DONE. 

I am the first one to admit that preparing takes a lot more work than just dealing with things as I go.  Packing my lunch and picking out clothes the night before does take more work but it's more than worth the time.  The mornings don't seem as harried and I know that I'm taking good care of myself.  The biggest accomplishment on the list, by far, was the phone call I made to get the ball rolling on therapy.  I have to say that I was feeling the nervous nellies in my tummy as I picked up the phone but it was the bravest thing I did today.  Brave? Seriously??  Yes, brave.  It was a step in continuing to walk toward putting the past behind me and daring to adventure into an unknown land.  It's me not willing to accept a life where I am a miserable 420 pounds.  As the assistant was asking me questions to see what type of therapy I need, I could feel the tears well in my eyes.  It wasn't out of fear or feeling scared, but I think more a sense of relief that I am facing demons head on.  The soonest appointment I could get was February 28th, unfortunately.  I did ask her to put me on a waiting list if any cancellations come up.  She acted like it was a big deal and told me she would have to get her supervisor involved.  Instead of backing down, I thanked her and told her I would appreciate that.  Otherwise, I would have to wait until mid-March just for the initial meeting, which is where I complete the paperwork, meet with a therapist and we go over a treatment plan.  The only bummer is that I have a community college coming onto our campus to conduct a workshop at the high school on the 28th, so I'm hoping one of our counselors can help with that so that I can keep the appointment.  I always hate to impose on them since they are just as busy as I am, but I also know they all care for me deeply.  Hopefully there will be a cancellation and I won't have to wait so long.  I'm one of those people who, once they make a decision, they want to take action on it now.

One of the fun things I did today was I finally got myself a little activity tracker.  I have been talking about getting a Fitbit or something similar for a couple of months now.  It's a little device that tracks your steps and other activity throughout the day and shows how many calories you're burning.  I didn't end up getting that little gadget, but I did get the Weight Watcher's version, Active Link.  It's a little gadget that looks like a thumb drive that I wear on my body.  It tracks my movements for seven full days to get a baseline of my activity to help me set fitness goals.  Then, the following week, I'll be able to see how active I am each day.  Then, when it's plugged into the computer, it syncs with my WW account and converts all my movement into activity points.  I currently am allotted 47 points for food on a daily basis and activity points converts to add to my daily total.  Let's face it, the more active we are, the more food we require to keep up energy levels.  I'm still learning as I go with how WW works, but so far it's been good.  While I was at the Weight Watcher's store buying my Active Link, I bought this really awesome success package they put together for new people.  For $40, it comes with a recipe book with meal ideas, a workout video, diary for tracking my food manually, a workbook that has strategies for being successful on the program, measuring cups and measuring tape all in a too-cute-for-words carrying case.

Look, you can even see my bowl of fruit ;-)

I am doing everything I can to be as successful as possible.  I feel like a sponge just soaking it all up, but that's not a bad thing at all.  My goal is to do whatever they tell me successful people in the program do and to do it without question.  I have a really open mind about it all and staying positive, I think, is half the battle.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with my rheumatologist.  I'm hoping we can get closer on figuring out what is causing the pain I've had in my upper legs for the last year.  I'm really tired of not feeling well and living with something for a year with no explained reason can't be good.  Hopefully I'll have more to report after I see him. 

Commitments for the coming week

I have been forgetting to call my counselor at the Optifast clinic to let him know I was leaving the group, so I decided to just leave him a message on his voicemail today.  I felt a little weird leaving a message like that for him, but I never really catch him at his desk or I'm working and can't really talk to him.  I have to say that I got the nervous nellies in my tummy as I was picking up my phone to call.  I don't know where that came from since my decision is very firm that I'm moving on. It's understandable, though ... Optifast has been a part of my life for the last year, in some form or another.  I've had the same counselor the whole way through and he was incredibly supportive.  It was hard making the decision to leave that to go down a different road, although not something I'm regretting.  I don't want anyone getting the wrong impression about the program.  While I couldn't stay on it the entire time because of medical issues, I did lose a lot of weight on it.  Of course, there are things about it that I wish it were different because when I went back to food, it was extremely difficult for me and I just don't think I was prepared enough for how hard it really would be.  However, there are some people that go on it, lose their weight and go off of it with absolutely no problems.  I'm glad it works so seamlessly for them.  For me, it was the first half of my journey.  The most important part was that it showed me how strong I am and how absolutely resilient (maybe stubborn?) I can be so that I know I can make it through the next part of the journey. 

For this coming week, I'm committing here that I'm going to follow through on some changes WW suggests for success on the program.  It's not even just with the food, but with some lifestyle changes, too.  Here's what my plan is:

• Pack my lunch/snacks the night before work for the next day.
• Continuing to track every food I have in my WW tracker, no matter what.
• Figuring out what I'll wear the night before so that I have plenty of time to eat breakfast in the morning and other things I need to do before heading out the door without rushing.
• Setting up a fruit bowl on my dining room table which is where I will go for easy to grab snacks.  I might even consider doing one at work, too.  
• Putting my workout clothes in see-through bins in my bedroom so that they are in plain sight as a reminder to exercise.  In fact, tomorrow I plan on bringing my clothes with me so that I can go for a workout on my way home from work.   

I have one more I want to add that is not part of WW:  at some point this week, I will look into scheduling an appointment to meet with a therapist through Kaiser.  It's time.  I have avoided this for a long time, probably years, because I have history with therapy.  What I mean by that is that things come out in sessions with a therapist, things that I probably wanted buried and didn't want to deal with, things that I am certain will make me cry.  I've shared on here before that I had a pretty horrible childhood that included abuse and sexual assault towards me, which resulted in some pretty horrible adult years and food was the thing that was my coping mechanism.  I don't sit in hate in any longer about that time and I have forgiven the abusers, but that doesn't mean I've treated myself in the same way.  And I know that when I get stressed out, frustrated, sad, happy - whatever the emotion is, I pick up food to help me deal with that feeling.  I've never been thin before, having always had this issue in my life, and I don't want to get down to a normal weight only to put it all back on again.  Even as small as I got before I gained some weight back caused some of those feelings to surface.  So, as much as I don't want to see a therapist, I know that it is something I absolutely must do if I want to continue moving forward in the most healthy way possible. 

I'm in a good space right now as I type this, feeling some much needed peace that I haven't felt for a long while.  My body is still feeling pain, but I'm seeing the rheumatologist later this week to deal with my leg pain and I know I'm doing everything I can to find some relief in that realm as well.  Putting one foot in the front of the other is the best thing for me.

Saw the rheumatologist

I didn't post yesterday and I had several people who sent me e-mails asking if I was okay.  I love it!  I'm used to checking in daily and I guess you guys are used to it, too ;-)  Yesterday I was all set to write, but then my Internet service went down, along with my cable.  Even my cell service was being weird.  I live in California, nowhere near that devastating storm, so I didn't know what the heck was going on.

Yesterday I went to my physical therapy appointment and updated the therapist on what's going on with my back, as well as the situation with the R.A., all the bloodwork that's been done and just pretty much everything.  I'm making progress on the back pain, but it is still significantly with me every day.  She did give me some new exercises to do that further works on strengthening my core and leg muscles at the same time.  I was happy about that because that's exactly what I want.  You know things have drastically changed in my life if I'm saying I was happy to be given exercises to do!

The other thing that happened yesterday is that I decided to fight a little harder for myself.  I mentioned that I got an appointment with a rheumatologist on my birthday, over a month away from now.  My primary care doctor told me what I needed to do to get a sooner appointment, so I called back and basically shot straight with them.  I told them that not only was I scared about perhaps being told that I have R.A., but that it would be done on my birthday and I just couldn't deal with the stress of that.  Besides, waiting a month to hear that news is like torture, so I am willing to go anywhere at any time in the county (I told this to the person who originally scheduled my appointment, but thought I'd try again).  Miraculously, the person that was helping me on the phone, someone different, was very sympathetic towards me and found an appointment for me for today.  It was a little further away, but go ahead and ask me if I cared how far it was.

I have been praying a lot and I knew that it put me in a place of great peace so that by the time I walked in to see the doctor, I was perfectly calm and my regular self.  The doctor was very thorough with me and very patient as I told him everything that has transpired.  He looked at my history, especially at all the bloodwork that has been done recently, asked me a ton of questions and did a physical exam.  He told me that I don't clinically present as a person with rheumatoid arthritis.  Yes, some of my labs were abnormally high, but that's why they look at more than just the labwork.  That was a huge relief to me and I found myself silently praying to God in thanks as the doctor continued talking to me.  He is going to run more lab tests, wants me to do x-rays and is going to investigate further why I am continuing to have the pain in my legs.  He will get back to me when he has all the results and then I'll see him in three months.  I remember telling a friend a few days ago that if it turns out I don't have R.A., I would gladly take the pain in my legs.  In comparison, leg pain is nowhere near what the people who have that disease suffer.  If you're curious, just do a Google image search on it and you'll see why I was in tears over the weekend with the thought that I might have it.

I'm definitely not dropping the issue of the constant pain in my legs, as well as the lightheadedness.  After all, something is wrong.  But, I'm not going to spend all my energy worrying about it.  I have seen a team of doctors and other medical staff lately and I know they're on it.  Let's see, in the last two weeks, I've seen the acupuncturist, physical therapist, dermatologist, neurologist, nurse practitioners, primary care and now the rheumatologist.  Man, that's a lot of poking and prodding!  You know what?  I haven't given up on myself or given in to the stress.  I'm still taking really good care of myself and walking through all of this.  It's definitely not easy dealing with all the monkey wrenches of life, but the difference is now that I am dealing with it.  I know that food does not solve any of it and I am not about to turn the direction of this ship into a perfect storm to send me back to that 417-pound Kathy.  There's just no way.  A shift has happened in my life and while I may make mistakes along the way, the whole point is that I pick myself up and keep right on trekking down the road, taking you all with me of course ;-)