A rough "journal" entry

First bit of news. I am in a happy place (physically). I am HOME in GR for a few days! So refreshing..now if all my people would come home from work, so I can see them all will be perfect!

Second thing: This blog is first and foremost for me. It is my version of a journal. I can't seem to stay committed to writing in a journal for more than a week, but I can here...don't know what that is all about but it just means that at times you are gonna get something that is a bit raw and unpolished and I refuse to edit it to make it nice! (this was added post writing!)

Now on to the rest of this blog entry.

I tend to be a head person. I figure things out in my head first and by the time it comes out of my mouth (or fingertips) it is very well packaged with the struggle and the answer to the struggle. Part of this is a "look good and put together" mentality, part is just who I am, and part is a way to talk my way through something and maybe if I have the right answer, the right behavior will follow. Regardless of the motivation for it though, this does not serve me well, not emotionally anyway. (By the way, this happens so fast, I don't even realize I am doing it, and is often subconscious. I can't stop it from happening, but I can add to it!)

For years, I had been what I call emotionally bankrupt. I would feel the extreme emotions (about once a month :-) or happiness, but the everyday little disappointments or sadness or anger just was not there for me. I wasn't depressed, I was just "good" or "fine". IN the past 2 years I sought counseling on this and came to know that my emotional health and my ability to feel my emotions ties DIRECTLY to my weight loss. When I am fully connected and present in what is real for me I am better able to manage my eating and even my exercise. This whole emotional connectedness really took off in my last 6 months in GR. I was experiencing emotions all the time! I felt a little crazy at times! Crying one minute but full of true laughter and joy the next! Emotions were not all consuming as I once thought...they just were. IT was a good thing.

The other day, I was talking to Coach about an email I sent him re: some hard conversations I had with mom about my weight loss journey and the hurtful things she says and does at times. I reported the facts, relayed the conversations and ended the email. While the conversations were uncomfortable, I was fine! I was good! The next day while chatting Coach asked me. "So how ya holding up?"

I wanted to say that I was good or fine, except that suddenly my eyeballs were filled with a salty water like substance and I could no longer see my computer to say anything. I realized I wasn't sure exactly how I was but fine or good did not fit. Coach pointed out that is my body telling me that my heart was hurting. GO figure! What struck me though was that 1 month back at home and I was already back to numbing out my feelings and living in a state of fine-ness. I wasn't connected to the emotional reality of those conversations or to how I was really doing in my new home. It took so long to get plugged in to those emotions and one change (although a BIG one) and I am unplugged so quickly!

I don't want to be FINE! I want to be great! fabulous! I want to experience all the emotions again. I want to be able to write what is really going on for me and not the packaged stuff that has been of late. Not that what I have written has been untrue...it just hasn't been fully true, because I didn't realize what was going on.

I was and am still trying to adjust. Figure out my routine. And in a way who I am as a 32 yr old woman living in her mother's house? Am I adult or child? (feels like child at times) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what I should be doing. And I am great at self talk. You know the stuff that sounds like "I can do this!" "I am doing this!" "This time is different!"

While these statements are true, the other truth is this. I am terrified and feel very alone in this in my new place. I keep thinking, if I can just make it to 75 lbs then I will have lost more than ever at one time and maybe, just maybe, then something will stick and I will be able to keep going.

Coach asked me how all of this (the conversations and the fact that I realized I wasn't feeling things again) were impacting my food/exercise. I wish I could easily say that it wasn't...at least not yet. But if I look at it really, sure I have still been counting my calories and if anything have been under eating, but the quality of what I have been eating has not been so good. Eating for comfort again has most likely been happening because all my old comfort foods are around and readily available, this time I just count them. But that doesn't allow me to feel whatever is going on. And this journey is NOT just about being physically healthy. It is also about being emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy. If I am really honest, if I had to choose between physical or emotional health. I will take teh emotional health anyday. I would rather feel everything and be fat than feel nothing and be thin.

It has certainly affected my motivation to fight to get to the gym when I just don't want to. In GR, it just wasn't an option to not go. Granted many times, I could call or text someone to coordinate a time to go together, but there were plenty of times that I had to choose to go myself and then to stay there the entire time, actually working!

So here is the recap of my crazy off the cuff journal entry above....My heart hurts. Everything else is self talk.