Not recognizing how small I've become

There have been times where I look in the mirror or look at my own body and not see the difference in the weight.  I know that's ridiculous because, helloooo ... how can you not notice the difference in 190 pounds gone?  I just still see myself with a filter on, the one that allowed me to be 417 pounds.  Sometimes I'll be driving in my car and look at the distance between my tummy and the steering wheel, yet still be so amazed.  Not too long ago, I could barely fit behind the steering wheel and had to drive with it practically in my lap.  Just shocking.  Where did all that weight go all of a sudden?

I had another shocking moment.  In my communication class tonight, we had to head over to the Arts building for a private screening of a Asian-related movie in an auditorium.  I had been in this room before when I was at my heaviest and squeezing my bootie into one of those chairs would have been a miracle.  Here's what the room and those chairs looks like:

I don't know if you can fully appreciate the anxiety I was feeling.  To the right of each seat is the pull down desk if you wanted to take notes.  This auditorium was packed to the gills this time, though.  I sat down in an empty seat with the chairs right next to me remaining open.  Next thing I knew, people sat next to me because it was standing room only.  And you know what?  I had excess room to spare in my seat.  What a gift all of this has been.  No one in that room knew my secret ... that I weighed 417 pounds.  Then it hit me - I am not who I used to be.  Wow, that realization was pretty startling.  I pray no one ever gets to know that 417-pound Kathy in person again, except the remnants of her, which is who I am today.  I am no longer the biggest one in the room and that's a huge realization for me. And, to be honest, very difficult to deal with all at the same time.  If I'm not the biggest one in the room any longer, then what is my identity now?

Weekly weigh-in

I am perplexed, that's all I can say.  I went to my Optifast clinic tonight and wanted to find out what was going on with the medical tests they ran last week.  My ferritin levels were definitely in the abnormal range (as were two other tests), but what they were looking for was something too low and mine were too high.  So, it turns out I don't have anemia ... or any of the other diseases that were possibilities.  Trust me when I say I was definitely relieved.  But, I was also left feeling very confused, frustrated and a bit angry.  I mean, WTF??  What is going on with me then?

I told the physician's assistant, actually both of them as I saw two of them together, this is not a figment of my imagination.  I am in real pain.  I have real limitation with the weakness in my legs.  I have real lightheadedness that makes me lean against a wall almost every time I get up from sitting down.  They didn't doubt me, but I felt like I just needed to say it out loud.  Actually, I wanted to scream at someone, anyone.  I want to be more active, I want more and yet my own body is holding me back.  Actually,  I just want to feel "normal" - getting up and not feeling dizzy, no gripping pain on my thighs when I do something simple as sit down in a chair.  Yes, I do manage to walk long distances, but I have to really push through the pain every single day.  I wake up with the pain, I have it all day long and it goes to bed with me, only to start it fresh the next day.  When people see my weight loss and ask me how I feel, I have to be selective with my words.  Yes, I feel so much better than I felt at over 400 pounds, but do I feel good?  Well, no.

The next step is that I have been referred to a neurologist.  I did ask the P.A.'s if the Optifast product is causing this or what I should do in relation to that.  Everybody has a different reaction and side effects to being on product, so I felt compelled to ask even though I didn't want them taking me off.  They said to stay on the product because it definitely is healthy, but then talk to the neurologist about it.  If that person feels it's best for me to get off the product, then we'll go from there and follow the plan they have for people who are not on product but still doing a weight reduction program.  I am not about to quit, so don't worry anybody.  I have worked really hard to get to this spot and I am not about to throw the white flag in the air now.  Oh hell no to that!

On a much happier note, I am thrilled to report that I lost three and a half pounds this week making my grand total  ...

190 pounds lost

I mean, woo hoo on that front!!  I began eight months ago and I've lost an unreal amount of weight.  At the end of the day, despite all the physical and medical setbacks that I have been encountering, I'm still doing the best I can and it appears my best is pretty good.  Seriously, thank you ALL for your support.  Whether I know you in person, met you online, we text each other on our phones or we've never exchanged words, I need you all to know that I could never have come this far without you and I know I'll need all of you as I continue along in my journey.  This is one of the most challenging things I've ever done in my life, yet I know I don't walk alone in this and I'm so grateful for that.

Stop being so negative

My mom came over to spend some time with me today and I got the full force of her negativity put on to me.  I was telling her about the medical tests I was waiting to hear back on, which I told myself I was not going to do until I knew more, but she could see something was wrong on my face.  So when I told her, she went into this space about how people gain weight back after the program, how I need to stop immediately and that she knows a better way.  My mother is overweight herself and has only gotten larger as I've gotten smaller, so I'm assuming her little rant had more to do with her issues than mine.  Here I sit, having lost a load of weight eight months after starting, living on shakes almost the entire time (until a meal was added in recently) and as I'm getting closer to the end, now she decides to just give it to me full force?  Seriously??

Okay, I know I'm trying to understand her thinking and really that is none of my business.  She is going to feel how she is going to feel.  I did, though, tell her I need her support and I did not need to hear her negative thoughts.  Those she could keep to herself, thank you very much.  I did tell her that I would not be putting myself in harm's way and would get off the fast and transition back onto food following the clinic's guidelines if it turns out that I'm in any sort of danger.

Here's what I know about my medical tests that were taken late last week:  I definitely have one of the following:

• Anemia
• Leukemia
• Hodgkin's
• Liver disease

My ferritin levels were through the roof and Kaiser shows online, when you look at lab results, that it is one of the above items.  Obviously I am now hoping I'm anemic and not any of the other things.  The waiting is the part that drives me nuts.  The way Kaiser works is that all of your lab results are available online (unless it's something like cancer).  Then, you receive an e-mail stating you have new results listed in your account.  This can happen at any time and, in this situation, the results came in after the clinic was closed on Friday.  So, technically, I know more than they do right now until they get in tomorrow.  Yet, they are the ones to determine what's going on or if I will have to go for even more tests.

Right now, more than anything, I don't need anyone being a Negative Nancy around me.  I love my mom, but she sometimes just does not have a filter.  Thankfully I've grown enough in my inner strength to hold up my hand and say to her, "Mom, stop it, right now."  My regular weigh-in is tomorrow night at the clinic so I'll be stopping in at the medical office and speaking with their team to find out what's going on.  Hopefully I'll know more by tomorrow night at this time when I post my weekly weigh-in numbers.  I'm feeling a little stressed out right now, needless to say.

Having a little perspective

We all start our weight loss journeys in different spaces.  For me, I weighed in at 417 pounds at my first Optifast class on February 6th of this year, even though my top weight was 420 pounds.  When they asked me to set a goal weight, that was a completely foreign concept to me.  Do you mean I might actually hit an ideal weight someday?  I couldn't wrap my brain around that, so it was incredibly difficult for me to finally say, "Yes, this is my goal weight."  After some negotiation, the clinic and I settled on a goal of 160 pounds for me.  Again, it still felt foreign to me but at least it was something to shoot towards.  As of last Monday, I weighed in at 230 pounds.

Now, for some people, my current weight would have been completely unacceptable for them.  I've seen postings where people have been disgusted with themselves at or near this weight.  They have labeled themselves as a "fat cow" or described the inability to breathe normally because of all their excess weight.  I know they are describing themselves and how they felt at the time, but I would be less than honest if I said I wasn't affected by comments like that.  Again, this is about me and not about them.  It is still hard to live comfortably in a world where you are judged by your weight.  If people are judging me at 230 pounds, just imagine what things were like for me when I weighed over 400 pounds.  People can be utterly cruel, determining your worth as a human being just by looking at you.  Is it no wonder that the food was easier to invite into my life than close relationships with people who could ultimately hurt me more than I thought Twinkies could?

If you are anything like me, food was more than just food.  It was never so simple as making a decision to push away from the table or just to say no to that piece of cake.  Some people will never understand that concept, even if they do understand things like alcoholism or other types of addictions.  For me, I am glad that healing has happened and continues to happen in my own life.  I think a lot of you are with me on that front, aren't you?  Starting this blog back in January was initially just for me.  If other people happened upon it, that was great but I used it primarily as a place for me to journal.  It has now become a labor of love for me to connect with my spirit, to grow in healing and to move forward to a healthier life.  After over 15,000 visitors, I know I'm not alone in this and I am completely humbled by that.

Today as I was outdoors walking to get some exercise in, I was overwhelmed with how great it made me feel.  No, it didn't take away aches and pains as I still deal with all of that on a daily basis.  Somehow, I am able to push through and focus on taking good care of myself as much as I can.  I am constantly reminded of something very important:

I am not saying that I think I am beautiful in the egotistical sense.  What I mean is that I am constantly reminding myself of the fact that I am beautiful because I don't give up, I don't succumb to the voice that sometimes tells me I'm not good enough.  I face fears I have, I am standing up with courage I didn't think I possessed, I am willing to do the best I can to fight for myself and for my life.  Most importantly, God reminds me that I am beautiful.  Perhaps it's in the way someone else looks at me and smiles, maybe it's how another might tell me that I inspire them or it's even in that small voice inside of me that says, "Kathy, get over yourself, you are beautiful."  I can begin loving myself as I love other people.  That's not easy as I can find a lot not to love, at least that part of me that is fighting to stay in the cocoon of obesity where things just feel a lot safer (even though they're not).

I'm grateful for the place I find myself in today.  I'm not at goal weight yet, but I feel like a different person than I did before even if I don't always see it.  And I really believe in my heart that I will find myself at a normal body weight someday not too far away.  Compared to where I was, I'm on the border of it now.  You are beautiful, Kathy.  So are you, dear reader.  So are you. 

My foray into the world of acupuncture

Some of my test results from the lab work I did yesterday at Kaiser are still coming in, so it looks like I will have to wait until Monday when I go to the Optifast clinic to find out what is going on with the anemia.  In the meantime, I am continuing to deal with back pain, which I have talked about before (I know ... when it rains, it pours).  I have some pretty significant lower back pain that I am continuing to get treatment for with a physical therapist.  However, the physical medicine doctor also wanted me to start acupuncture treatments to see if that helps.  I was actually pretty surprised when she suggested it because the treatments are covered through Kaiser but with an outside provider.  That's pretty progressive for a large hospital group that follows western medicine to support the practice of eastern philosophies.

I have never had acupuncture treatments before and, honestly, didn't know much about it except I knew there were needles involved.  People I know that have had treatments swear by them and say how relaxing the experience is.  As far as I'm concerned, I am open-minded enough to at least give it a try, especially if it is going to help with the pain.  So, I selected a provider from the list Kaiser gave me that was located close to my office, not knowing much about this person at all.  It's hard to know who to pick when you don't have a frame of reference, but I did check out her website and everything seemed fine to me.  One thing that was surprising, and I guess it was a pre-conceived notion of mine, was that she was not Asian, as I just naturally assumed she would be.  Of course that was fine with me.  My ethnic background is that I am Filipino on my mom's side and a whole mix of European ancestry on my dad's side, so I definitely have the non-typical experience.  I just found it fascinating as we typically don't see someone who is non-Asian as an acupuncturist. 

I waited in the reception area while Kelly finished her work with another client and looked around.  Being the geek-a-zoid that  I am sometimes, I snapped this pic when I was alone.  The room was very soothing with exotic smells and soft music.  The artwork on the walls was definitely drawing me in and helping to let any stress I was feeling in the moment leave me.  I sat there and wondered to myself if it was possible to hope that the back pain I have been experiencing would somehow be alleviated through this process.  I always assumed the pain had to do with all the excess weight I was carrying around in the beginning.  After losing nearly 190 pounds, the pain is still there and that's why I knew I needed to seek treatment for it.  This whole experience with weight loss has really shown me that I was not doing a very good job of taking care of my needs.  If I am experiencing pain,  I have to say something.  That's a great thing to do.  Look at my experience with the anemia - had I never said anything about what I was going through, it would have been left undiagnosed.

It was now my turn to go into the main room where Kelly would be working with me to review my medical history before we got started.  When I got in the room, I was immediately concerned because I saw the exam table and wondered if it would support the weight of my body.  In my mind, I often times still see myself as I was when I first started my journey back in February at 417 pounds.  I hated the fact that I let my judgements about myself cloud my experience as I walked into the room, but decided that I needed to just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward figuratively, let alone physically.

We went through the paperwork I completed and she asked me a ton of questions.  She was floored when we talked about my weight loss.  It is something that still tickles me when I see the look of absolute shock on someone's face when they find out how much weight I have lost.  Literally, this woman did a double take and her jaw was practically on the floor.  Honestly, it is a very big deal and I really forget that sometimes as I go through my journey.  In fact, as I was describing everything to her, I started to get tears welling in my eyes.  This was not some arbitrary person I was talking about ... it's about me and my life.  I am doing a lot of things to change it and that feels really good.  She did tell me that the main focus of her work with me would be about the back issues, but she would also be helping me in a full-circle way so that we can deal with my light-headedness, inability to get good sleep and more.  First I would start off getting on the table and laying down on my back so that she could start treatments there and then eventually lay on my tummy for the second half.  She left me alone for a few minutes so that I could take off my shoes, socks and watch and then climb on the table while she grabbed some supplies.  Here is the table I found myself fearing.

Is it just me, or does it look little to you, too?  After she came back into the room, she explained what the needles were going to feel like and had me touch one so that I could tell how different they were from a typical needle.  To be honest, I wasn't feeling any concern about the pain.  Last summer, when I had melanoma and was prepping for surgery, the team had to perform some tests using these very large needles that went below the surface of my skin to determine if the cancer had spread to lymph nodes.  They described the feeling of bee stings with each needle insertion, which was a total of eight.  So, really, little acupuncture needles did not have the best of me in comparison.  Kelly briefly explained to me the theories behind acupuncture and finding my chi, describing the sensation I would be feeling at some points when the needles are inserted as something similar to a sort of fireworks coursing through my body.  Oh my gosh, she was so right about that.  When she put a needle in the middle of one of my legs as I was laying on my back, the sensation was felt on the entire right side of my body.  It was so unexpected, but also completely fascinating to me.

The whole experience was lovely, really.  I was utterly relaxed, even fell asleep on the table a couple of times when I was left alone to let the needles do their thing.  When she was done, she finished up with a massage on my back and calming lotion applied to the area where I have the back pain.  I have never had a massage before, not ever.  I always had a hard time with that because I was self-conscientious about being bigger and having someone else touching my body in a non-intimate moment.  I really recognized that so much of my life was spent not living and not being in the moment because of how I felt about the size of my body.  Yet, here I was allowing someone access to all of me and she wasn't turned off by it.  If anything, she was very tender and friendly.  Never did I feel judgement from her and, oh my gosh, I completely needed that.

So, I will be getting acupuncture treatments for a couple of months.  I'm really looking forward to this because, if this one visit was any indication, it is a very loving treatment towards my body and ultimately my soul.  As I allow her to touch my body when she provides treatment, I really am letting go more and more of the iron wall that I had silently built up over the years that kept me in the cocoon of obesity, protecting me from nothing.  This is a very good thing for me.

Turns out there is an explanation after all

The other day I was wondering if I was being a hypochondriac.  Turns out I had every reason to be concerned.  I received a call from the medical office at my Optifast clinic telling me they had the results in from labwork I had completed earlier in the day.  I finally addressed with my clinic, when I was there on Monday, that there is something seriously wrong with me, particularly with my legs.  I can't do normal things, like squat down on them, lunge or even sit down without extreme pain in my thighs and lower legs.  If I dropped a pencil at my feet right now, I couldn't bend down on my knees to pick it up.  Before sending me to a specialist, the clinic wanted to do a few more tests.

I heard back and it looks like I've got anemia.  The clinic now wants me to go back to the lab to do a few more in-depth tests to determine what type of anemia it is so that they can map out a treatment plan for me.  I started looking up some of the symptoms.  Here is a handful of what I have:

• Fatigue/tiredness - I am tired all the freaking time, but I always equated it with working full time, going to school and doing Optifast, let alone the hustle and bustle of life.  When I can't sleep at night more than 3-4 hours, I think it's just because I'm stressed out.  This is also where the leg and muscle issues come into play - my legs feel completely fatigued when I need to climb hills or stairs.  Really, they are fatigued all of the time if I'm being completely honest with myself, they really are in pain every waking moment. 
• Chest pain - don't worry, it's not as if my heart feels like it's going to conk out or something.  There are just times when I feel a stretching around the area where my heart is.
• Shortness of breathe - this usually occurs when I am dealing with the fatigue of my legs.  It's not the same shortness of breathe associated with being overweight.
• Dizziness - all that lightheadedness I have been feeling ever since I started Optifast?  Yes, this is probably the culprit.
• Cold hands and feet - I am always freezing.  I am constantly complaining about how cold my office is at work ... I wonder if it's because of the anemia after all.  Right now, my house is 71 degrees inside, yet I'm wearing long sleeves, socks and my fingers are blue.  

I could go on  and on, but I'll spare you!  I think you get a fair and accurate portrayal of what I'm dealing with.   I'm waiting to hear back from the clinic on the latest test results from today.  In the meantime, something I have been thinking about is wondering where I go from here with Optifast.  I absolutely love the program, adore it really.  It has given me my life back and I'm incredibly grateful for that.  My weight loss journey is not finished yet, but, honestly, I've been suffering some difficult-to-deal-with side effects.  In addition to the anemia, my skin is so dry that I have cuts on my hands and lips from cracking, the veins in my hands/arms are bulging like that of a weight-lifter, my blood pressure is low and so is my blood sugar (although adding in that meal has really helped).  I'm not basing on Optifast by any means.  Anyone who has been reading this blog knows I love the program.  I heart it.  However, just like any program, sometimes there are side effects that come along that causes the need for adjustment.  This is precisely why I am such a big advocate of doing this program under medical supervision, as the program dictates in the U.S.  It's not because I want to line the pockets of any organization, but because the medical experts provide the appropriate guidance that those of us without the medical backgrounds need while doing such an intense program.

The prospect I am dealing with is transitioning to a full-food program sooner, even though I have 70 pounds left to lose, then stay in that zone until I'm ready to go into maintenance. Part of taking care of yourself is doing things that are difficult.  The easy thing for me would be to just keep the status quo, keep pushing through pain and discomfort.  Yet, is that really what I want to be doing?  Hardly!  I haven't made any decisions yet, though.  I'm sort of waiting to hear back from the clinic before I make any moves.  I think really I just need to "talk" it out here so that I'm doing what's best for me and my health.  I'm ready not to feel tired any longer. 

The true definition of love

You may have noticed that I have a LOT of links to other bloggers on my blog.  Some are doing Optifast like I am for their weight loss, while some are doing it through other methods.  Regardless, I get so much from the journey of everyone who walks along the path to good health like I am.  I can't read all the blogs every single day, but I do try to keep up, comment when I can and reflect on the writings and experiences of others.

Yesterday I read a completely fabulous, beautiful and inspiring post from Jennifer over at It Sux to be Fat.  She talked about the love between she and her husband, referencing 1 Corinthians 13:4.  Even if you're not a Christian, you've probably heard the verse a million times at weddings.  "Love is patient, love is kind ..."  But one thing that she said that hit me square between the eyes was to have us think about whether or not we show ourselves this kind of love.  I have not been able to stop thinking about it since reading the post last night (if you haven't read it yet, seriously, click on the link above and read it - it'll hit home). 

As I lose more and more weight, as I become more present in this world, I am faced with the task of accepting myself as I am - right here and right now.  That means accepting my excess skin that is showing because of the weight loss, my imperfections as being wholly perfect in God's eyes and, essentially, loving myself unconditionally where I stand right in the moment.  As I was reflecting on the verse and my response to it, I realized I am way too hard on myself.  Way. Too. Hard.  I'm going to repost that verse and those associated with it below and then break it down in a way to help me see where I can continue growing.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8:  "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails."

So the questions I am asking myself are these as I look at how I show myself this kind of love ...

Am I patient with myself?
Am I kind towards myself?
Am I jealous of others?
Do I brag about myself?
Am I arrogant?
Do I act unbecomingly?
Am I self-seeking?
Am I easily provoked?
Do I not take into account wrongs I have suffered?
Do I celebrate the truth?
Do I believe positive things about myself?
Do I have hope in myself?
Do I have hope in others?
Do I endure?
Do I see myself as a failure?

Looking at this list of questions, I am attempting to be as honest with myself as I can possibly be.  I have a long way to go.  This in no way minimizes the road I've already traveled, but it also helps me see that I need to keep staying the course on this road.  There are reasons people overeat or partake in some other sort of addiction.  It is my charge to do things differently in my life.  Do I need to seek comfort and solace in a bag of chips or scoop of ice cream?  Of course not.  Yet, those things are an easier method of escape than dealing with why I am sometimes not kind towards myself, why I am jealous of things other people have, of why I tell myself lies about the sort of person I believe myself to be and so much more.  I am absolutely my own worst critic, convincing myself of things far worse than anything else someone might lay on me.  I am certainly not patient and I am not kind towards myself.  However, I also am starting to see the things other people see in me.  I do have a good heart, I am a loving person and I have a lot I contribute to this world.  I just get to keep working on finding a meeting point between the worst ideas I have about myself and the reality of who I am.  It seems so much easier to believe the worst about ourselves than the best.

In what ways do you show yourself love?