Filler

In all the weight loss books I've read they always talk about examining why you overeat. What void are you trying to fill? Is a question often asked. It came up on the Oprah show will all the amazing weight loss stories and it makes sense. Any addiction or habit forms as some way to feel full or fulfilled or to escape reality of some sort. So the question I am pondering is...what is my void? Its a complex question that requires a great deal of introspection. What am I missing in my life? What do I long for? The first thing that pops into my head is a sense of community and a feeling of belonging. Years ago-eleven years ago to be exact-I embarked on an adventure known as Mission Year where I experienced for the first time in my life a true sense of community that filled that place of longing. I lived with five amazing, unique, hysterical, intelligent young adults who surprised me every day with experiences of deep unity and compassion. It was the most challenging year of my life and experiences I had forced me to face some of my deepest issues, among them a deep fear of being unworthy of love and of being alone which led me to spend the first 22 years of my life building up thick walls to protect myself and distance myself from people. Some of these walls were anger, sarcasm, wit, and some were fat. Its easy to hide from the world and hide from intimacy when you are hiding behind extra pounds. I used the rolls of fat to explain my loneliness...if I were just skinny or thin...then people would like me. The eating and lack of exercise formed a barrier that kept me safe from being hurt but also kept me from experience love and friendship. During mission year, I was able to break through those walls and fall in love with my teammates and the neighborhood we lived in, the church, the people I worked with, the kids we developed relationships with...everyone. I felt safe. I felt complete. I felt connected. During that time, I would get up at 6am and walk to the neighborhood park and go walking around the track with my mission year teammates supporting me....encouraging me. I also became a vegetarian and did not look to food for any level of fulfillment. I didn't think about food. I didn't crave food. I cooked meals for my team-I did the grocery shopping for our little household and I felt needed. I was a part of an unique, crazy, interesting, family that honestly was intensely mutually supportive so the void I felt, that longing for a place of intimacy and belonging, was filled. Since that time, I haven't found a place like that...a place of spiritual, emotional, psychological, and familial intimacy where those needs, those longings are met. So the question now becomes, how do I find that place again? How do I fill those needs? Getting involved in a church again seems the obvious answer...but...to be frank...i gots issues with church...meaning established church. They lack authenticity and community and I just don't seem to fit. I have tried a few over the years but none seem to be right. I know that I will not find the community that I had during mission year in a church or neighborhood or any where else. Mission year provided the opportunity, guidance, and God put Team Voltron together in an amazingly perfect way that can not be repeated...

I have people in my life who accept me and love me and support me but they are scattered all over the country which make the day to day intimacy I crave impossible to maintain...or does it? Community has many facets and definitions. It looks differently for different people and different situations. If the void I use food to fill is a sense of community and belonging, I need to explore ways to fill that need. One major way would be to get the heck out of the house. I have become a hermit of sorts as of late. I also do need to explore spiritual community, to figure out what that needs to look like in my life and how to create it. As I add exercise into my daily life, I am also seeking to fill those needs-community and belonging.

Getting in Shape...again

I have a love hate relationship with Oprah and rarely watch her show. Today was one of those rare days where I caught it and kept it on. It was a "best of" episode where she had on people who had lost hundreds of pounds of weight without surgery or pills but with their own choices, motivation and hard work. I had heard of this episode before and had even caught glimpses of it but today I actually sat for a few minutes and watched-and listened-to part of it. The stories that were shared were truly amazing and powerfully motivating. One woman lost over 500 pounds. FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS. Other people lost upwards of 300 pounds. These people did not go on The Biggest Loser, they did not get gastric bypass, they did not hire million dollar personal chefs or anything like that. They simply made the choice to make the changes in their lives they wanted to make for themselves and by themselves. I found the stories inspiring and realized I need to take care of myself better. Yes, I have said this for years. I know...and it is always a struggle...to make the choice to exercise and to eat well...but this is something I CAN do. Right now several aspects of my life feel completely out of my control. I've been unemployed for over a year and continue to search for, apply for, interview for and get rejected for jobs. I have no control over when or if I will get a job. I can only do my best, put myself out there, tweak my resume, pound the pavement and pray. But I can control what I eat and how I spend the time I have each day with my boy. Caleb is also a HUGE motivation for getting into shape. I want to be active with him. I want to play with him, run with him, chase him around, tickle him, challenge him, wrestle with him...I don't want him to be ashamed of his fat mom or afraid that I am not healthy. I don't want to tell him "i can't do that with you because i am too big or too out of shape or too tired." I also want to model healthy choices and behaviors for him. He needs me to be healthy for him and with him. I don't want to miss any time with my son and I want to do everything I can to be the best mom I can be for him. I also want to be around and active for as long as humanly possible..to be with my grandkids. Last week I walked with Caleb and Kieran to my mom and dad's place a mile from my house...it was a tough walk and a reality check. A mile should not be a tough walk for me. I wasn't running, I wasn't even walking fast....but I was breathing heavily and sweating and exhausted....I want to enjoy being active and outside and energized. I don't want to get tired walking half a mile ..I want to be confident in myself and I want to be able to buy bras at Victoria's Secret or a regular store. As it stands now, I have to order bras online. I want to feel comfortable in my clothes and have cute, fun, clothing that I actually like.

So here we go...the journey begins again. Today I weigh 305 pounds. I am down from my highest point which was around 350 but I have also gained weight since giving birth. Currently I am not active. I spend most of my day on the couch or doing random housework. I can't afford to join a gym right now-I loved going to the gym and working a personal trainer when I had the money to do so. But now, just not possible. I do however have space and time and tools at home.

Here's what I have:

-yoga mat
-arm rings
-3, 5, 10 pound weights
-balance ball
-resistance bands
-that shaker arm thingy
-dvd player
-tv
-comfy shoes
-great stroller for caleb
-TIME

Today I started with the arm circle thingies and it was amusing...I felt the pain and enjoyed it as well. My arms are a huge bone of contention for me. As my former middle school students have pointed out, I don't have elbows because they are hidden behind upper arm fat. yuck. The focus for now is going to be my arms. The funny thing about the rings is that you spin them on your arms while doing arm circles with your hands pointed in various positions. Your hands are down, then straight out, then facing up. I desperately need to work on my coordination because my rings were flying across the room rather than saying on my wrists. My right arm does fairly well, but the left...woah...the things go flying. Its only about a ten minute workout and its no impact but gets my heart rate up, my sweat going and my arms hurting-in a good way. I also learned to do some stretches which felt really good.

Summation of day one-had a good breakfast: granola bar, yogurt, skim latte. Crappy lunch-left over pizza....crappy snack/dinner....ice cream. Attempted to do the arm routine, pretty much completed it but need more practice. Gotta do every day. Tomorrow I want to add in doing sit ups with the balance ball. Goal for the next seven days-do the arms five days and sit ups at least three times.

Caleb's Birth

I had several ultrasounds throughout my pregnancy and was told that my little bundle of joy was measuring off the charts big. When I still had four weeks to carry the bun in my oven, the ultrasound showed him measuring 8 to 10 pounds already with a big head so my doctor and I decided we would schedule a c-section to be safe. Me, I was totally okay with this idea because the idea of giving birth to a baby 10 pounds or larger with a big head vaginally did not exactly appeal to me. Heck giving birth vaginally at all did not exactly appeal to me. Originally we scheduled the c-section for April 21st which was a few days before his due date, April 25th. Because of crazy things going on in my life-the new place I was supposed to be moving to wasn't ready yet and a sinus infection-I talked to my doctor and we moved it back to May 3rd. We wanted to give kiddo a chance to choose his own arrival date and for me to be healthy. I was happily planning on a c-section weather it would be May 3rd or another day because of the size of the kiddo. Fate hate other ideas. On Thursday April 22nd I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with inconsistent contractions that were twenty to thirty minutes apart but uncomfortable enough and consistent enough to make it so I couldn't sleep. I called the hospital birthing center triage line and they said to wait and see if they got more intense and closer together. I was also spotting but my water did not break. Generally, I was just uncomfortable. The contractions kept up all day Thursday, all night Thursday and into Friday. On Friday morning I couldn't take it anymore, so off to the hospital we went (we being my sister Rachel and I). We got there around 10am and I assumed I would have a c-section by the end of the day. Of course, my doctor wasn't on call so I had to explain my situation to the doctor who was there. Well, I learned quickly that most doctors are dead set against elective c sections. They insisted I wait and see and eventually sent me home saying it was false labor. How contractions that painful can be classified as 'false' I have no idea. So, I went to lunch with my sister and to my regular doctor's appointment then home. Things continued to get more and more intense and sleep continued to be impossible. Saturday morning I started officially keeping track of my contractions and they were 3 to 5 minutes apart on average and getting more and more intense. I called the hospital triage again and they said to come in if the contractions continued to be consistent and intense. So, we headed out again to the hospital determined to get this baby out. Before we even got to the hospital I was exhausted due to the two days of not sleeping and I hadn't eaten anything except some yogurt Friday morning at 8. Rachel and I got to the hospital around 3pm and everyone recognized me. Of course, there was a different doctor on duty so I explained my whole story to him. They checked to see if I had dialated at all and nope, nothin had changed since I was there on Friday but the contractions were intense and frequent. Again, I assumed a c section was in my future-immediate future I hoped. No such luck. They decided I should wait it out and see if I dialated. I said, okay, lets give it two hours. They said, okay. FOUR hours later after waddling around the maternity ward and bugging the nursing staff a million times, the doctor finally came in and rejoiced that I was dialating. I cried. Literally. Sobbed. I was exhausted. I was in pain. My back was killing me. I had been dealing with contractions and no sleep for two days now. I wanted a c section and I wanted the whole thing done. I wanted to sleep. Thank God my nurse was amazing. As soon as they said I was dialating, she came in and asked me if I wanted a epidural and other pain meds. YES. YES. A MILLION TIMES YES. She said she would make it so. In order to make it so, they had to move me to a room. This took another two hours. I was not happy. It was 9pm by the time I got into the room where they started the epidural and pain meds...once it started I was happy. I could finally relax and sleep....not for too terribly long tho. The nurse had to keep coming in to check my dialation and my water and I slept as much as I could in between the prodding. Around 4am there was a party because I was dialated to four and my water had broken sometime during the night. I swear if one more person had said how happy they were that I could do the vaginal delivery I was going to go postal. The nurse predicted that kiddo would arrive by 7am and she turned down my epidural so that I could feel to push when the time came. Around 5am I was fully dialated and started pushing. My epidural had worn off enough so that I could feel the contractions intensely but I couldn't feel where to push or feel where the baby was. I kept pushing but feeling like I wasn't doing it right or making any progress. Incidentally, I think its insane to have a clock right in front of a laboring woman. There is no need for a woman in hard labor to see the seconds ticking by and to know exactly how long she has been pushing. By that time, I was exhausted again and on top of the pain of the contractions, my lower back hurt like hell. Thank God my sisters and my friend Angela were there with me. During contractions, I squeezed my sister Aj's hand so tightly I left imprints. As the hard labor continued, I got more and more cranky and kept telling everyone to SHHHHHHHHH! I simply wanted quiet so that I could focus on the pushing. When the doctor and intern finally came in for the final pushes and delivery of my boy, they were talking about their morning coffee. Again, I yelled SHHHHHHHHHH! My nurse informed the doctors that I wanted quiet. Thank God they listened because otherwise I was going to have to get nasty. There was lots of loud pushing and yelling from me and at least once I said I couldn't do it and to get the kid out of me. The pain in my lower back was intense and increasing and I just wanted the whole thing to be over. I wanted a friggen c section remember? At 6:46am my little man emerged with my last push. Again, everyone was telling me how happy they were that I delivered vaginally...and I was like, yeah it was great fun...I just wanted to hold my baby and have everyone else leave. Of course, that didn't happen for at least another hour. They had to stich me up, clean me up, and get the baby all checked out. He inhaled some of the muconium so they had to take him away. He didn't cry when he was born. They brought him over so I could see him before they took him to make sure he was okay then got to work on me. It was probably an hour before they brought him back. Everyone was asking me too what his name was...I didn't know yet....I had to get to know this beautiful little boy before he could be named.