The three D's....

I'll give you a quick hint...diabetes isn't one of the D's I'll be talking about tonight!  Before I get into that though, I want to say...I LOVE getting all the comments that so many of you are leaving.  The ones about being inspired by me, the ones about being active and eating right and doing whatever all of you are doing to make positive changes, the suggestions (Sarah, thanks for yours!  I think I'm going to take up the 15g before bed suggestion!). I love reading all of them!  I've honestly never thought of myself as something special and I have no clue how so many of you can find my efforts inspiring, but I'm so glad that so many of you are making positive changes too!  And I love hearing about all of them!

Today was a rough one.  I think my body is getting a bit worn out at this point.  I lasted about 20 minutes on the Octane elliptical today.  Finished it off with a 3 minute cool down period to give my body a chance to catch up to me and then I headed over to the Life Fitness elliptical for another 30 minutes.  It's funny, when I first start, it feels like my legs are screaming for me to stop, refusing to move.  But when it's all over and I'm done with the workout, it feels more like they're thanking me for keeping going.  I feel great afterwards!  I am really looking forward to having a day off when I'm done with the next 5 days though!  Today, I finished up just in time.  As I was getting dressed after my shower, I heard my name being paged.  Lily has a habit of lying down in a corner of the child care center when her blood sugar is dropping.  Luckily, the child care workers are phenomenal!  They call for me right away and they always have a few little treats stashed away, just in case.  I came in to find Lily cuddling with one of the workers and sucking on her "treat" (a lollipop).  I tested her and 82 popped up on the meter.

Okay, on to the three D's.  Destructive, depressing, demoralizing.  I could think of a few more D's to go on that list too, I'm sure.  I'm pointing my finger at a common household item in all of their bathrooms when I'm saying those three words.  Your bathroom scale.  It is destructive, depressing, and demoralizing.  Here's the problem with the bathroom scale....how many times do we start on a "weight loss journey"?  We work our butts off, push ourselves, and then we go to the scale and find that we haven't dropped more than a couple of pounds or we've put on weight instead of taking it off.  Or maybe we've lost a good amount, but instead of seeing how far we've come, we focus on how far we have to go until we get to that magic number.  We all have a magic number.  If only I weighed x pounds, I'd be happy.  I'd love my body.  I'd have more friends, I'd be more out-going, more confident, healthier, happier.  And you know what?  Even if we did weigh x pounds, we still wouldn't be happy.  We'd have all the same problems we have now.  We would weigh x pounds and we'd be obsessed with trying to maintain that weight, trying not to indulge in emotional eating, trying to exercise and be active enough to keep that weight.  The scale drives us to be chained to that magic number, to be depressed about the number we see pop up, to be demoralized by our current weights, and to destroy our weight-loss goals.  Why do we do that to ourselves when the number on the scale means nothing to our over-all health?  The fact is, a woman who weighs 200 lbs could be a whole lot healthier than one who weighs 125.  The 125 lb woman could just have a higher metabolism.  If she doesn't get daily exercise, she's not all that healthy.  If the 200 lb woman gets moderate exercise daily and eats well, she could be in perfect health.  The number that pops up on the scale isn't important.  Want a more concrete example?  I'm a whole lot healthier now, at whatever weight I am now (258, when I started 25 days ago), than I was when I was 19, weighed 170 and manipulated my diabetes in order to weigh that amount.

So, here's my suggestion.  My plea for all of you who are trying to be healthier.  Rethink your goal.  Don't think, "I want to weigh x amount."  Do me (and yourselves) a huge favor and shove that scale deep into the closet with the understanding that you will not touch it for the next 30 days.  Instead, set your sights on something else.  My goal right now, I want to be able to run a 5k in the spring.  That's a concrete goal.  My less concrete goals...to build muscle, to drop some fat, to exercise for an hour each day, to add more fruits and vegetables into my diet (more vegetables than fruit though!).  For now, I'm concentrating on the exercise though.  I'm paying more attention to the changes in my body.  I've misplaced a few inches somewhere.  Not quite sure where they've gone, but the waist and thighs of my jeans are looser, my bras aren't fitting very well anymore, my t-shirts are looser.  I finally caved and bought myself that winter coat that I need for this winter.  Twenty-five days ago, I would have had to buy a size 3X in order for it to not look like I had stuffed myself into it.  Today, I bought a 2X and there's still a few extra inches.  That is an awesome feeling!

Okay, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for a good, no-low night for both Lily and me tonight!  And for the rest of the d-kids and parents!  I'm hoping a little extra sleep tomorrow morning (my husband says he's going to let me sleep in!) will kick my fatigue out so I can get back to challenging myself a bit!