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.

Reality Settling In

It has been a quiet week for me in blogland. I have been keeping up on reading what is going on, but have been pretty quiet.

In three days I leave to go back to Detroit. On one hand I am completely ok with this. I am going without fear of falling off the wagon so to speak yet aware of all the potential pitfalls that will come with a huge transition, especially back into the very place I learned my poor eating habits. On the other hand, I am beginning to realize how sad I am to be leaving this place I call home.

Up until yesterday, I have been able to live in blissful denial that when I leave on Sunday, I am not coming back in just a few days as I have with previous visits home. I have been avoiding saying goodbyes. I have actually even avoided seeing some people because I knew it would be that much harder. Believe it or not, I thought it would be easier to just slip out of here, nice and quiet like. Fortunately and unfortunately, I have some good friends who will not allow such a thing to happen and now a shindig has been planned, however the word good bye will not be allowed! While this will no doubt be a grand time of being with my people, those who have been my family here on the West Coast, it just makes everything that much more real. So today was quite a somber day as I really let it sink in exactly who and what I will miss.

While at the gym tonight with Adam and Aaron, I was painfully aware that I have 2 more days of workouts in this place. As I looked around the gym, seeing the treadmills, I began to think (and don't tell anyone, but I even teared up a bit) about how last September I was walking for 30 minutes at 2.5 or 2.8 and I was done. Then I realized, I just finished run/walking a mile after a 45 minute spin class which was preceded by another mile! David D. Hunting (the gym) has been good for me and good to me. It is incredibly significant that I can now easily spend 2 hours in this place. That I now run. I spin. I do aerobics classes and Pilate's. I have lost 38 LBS in this place. I will miss it. But more than just the gym, I will miss the familiarity I have in this place. The faces, while I don't know their names, their faces just fit in my head when I think of the gym.

I will miss the muscle head with the blond spiky hair who seems to be there whenever I am, no matter if it is morning or night workouts.

I will miss seeing the short balding old guy who also seems to be there whenever I am. Do these people live at the gym?

Spin instructors, Jeff and Emily. and Lorenzo from 6:30 Monday night class, who seems to think it is completely normal for a 300+ lb person to be in spin class. (I think so now too, but not at first)

I will miss Coach scaring the living daylights out of me whenever he and I happen to be at the gym at the same time. ( I cannot believe I am putting that in black and white!)

I cannot list all the people and things I will miss. But you get the idea. There is much to be missed here. Familiar places and faces those who don't know me and those who know me oh so well.

On the upside (is this denial or deflection creeping back in?) I get to go and try and re-create this in a new place! Reality is back. While the nameless familiar faces in the gym can be replaced with new nameless familiar faces, it is the familiar and known faces that can never be replaced, just added to.