Weight Loss Wednesday

OK, this is going to be hard to do, but here goes...

I've gained back my weight.  

Almost all of it.

Last May I started dieting or whatever the current politically correct term is for losing weight and getting in shape.  By November I had lost about 35 pounds and several dress sizes.  Though I still had a long way to go, I felt great and was starting to think I didn't look half bad, either.

But by the end of November, the ....

 what's a nice way of saying the sh** hit the fan?

my life began to turn on me.

Fred went into the hospital for acute renal failure.  

 In the next few months, there were three additional in-patient hospital stays for family members.

I could go into details but it would only serve to bore you and violate hippa laws and make me seem like the kid in that Shel Silverstein poem.  Only replace "! cannot go to school today" with "I cannot stress over making proper food choices and fitting in exercise today".  And replace all her symptoms with all the stressors in my life....

'I cannot go to school today, '
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play! '

So yeah, justifying why I failed to make the right choices is neither here nor there.  The point is, I got stressed, and I stopped exercising.  And started eating.  Eating all the wrong foods for all the wrong reasons.

You ever see one of those movies where the ship is going down and they have to throw everything overboard in a last-ditch effort to keep it from sinking?  That's me.  Only instead of throwing the cannons and the biscuits overboard I threw eating right and exercising and blogging and anything else good for my body or soul.

Image source

So here I sit, a year later, right back where I started. The only thing I have gained from it is that I am still alive and walking round outside the confines of a mental institution.  And I am now a certifiable Words With Friends and Solitaire junkie.  When all hell was raining down around my ears, I could sit in a corner with some donuts and stare at my screen and tune the world out.

But it kinda sorta got me through the worst of it.  God, I hope that was the worst of it.  No one's in the hospital right now.  I feel relatively sane.  I have plans of action for a couple heavy hitter stressors in my life right now.  And I sailed through without being pursued by men in white coats.

And here I am again in May.

Goodbye Tastykake.

Hello walking shoes.

Hello carrots.