A little bit of decent news

First, an update on my grandfather: he’s going to begin chemo treatment for his lung cancer. His biopsy showed that while this is an aggressive type of cancer, it also responds incredibly well to certain chemo drugs, of which are mild so there’s no risk of the nausea and hair loss, etc. that most people think of when they hear “chemo”. This cancer apparently responds well enough to this treatment that his doctors believe they can put him into remission with chemo alone without any surgery or radiation, at least for his chest – they will be doing radiation treatment on his brain as a precaution since this cancer has a tendency to metastasis in the brain. We’re hoping his white blood cell count will come back up enough this week that he can begin treatment. Without treatment, the oncologist said he could only expect to live another 2 months. That is obviously very upsetting, but there is still hope as the current plan is to move forward with the chemo a soon as possible. There is another bump in the road, however, as his chemo for his MDS must be put on hold while he undergoes treatment for the lung cancer. His doctors are hopeful that they can maintain the MDS with blood and platelet transfusions until his other treatment is done.

Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers that his blood counts come back up and stay strong as he begins the treatment process!

Now, to maintain my own sense of normalcy and attempt to focus on other things to avoid deep depression we return to our regularly scheduled programming… First things first, I want to say how super proud I am of my cousin Maury for taking control of her health as well as jumping back into the blogging world! I've missed her so much! If you're interested in checking out her journey, you can find her here. :)

Here is an update on measurements since beginning the Starting Strength program:

11/16/13

• Body fat estimation: 32.8% / 31.5% (Definitely more than I would have ever expected in 3 weeks! Used an average of the 3 BF% calculators on Fat2FitRadio.com)
• Weight: 189 lbs / 192.2 lbs (I weighed myself after breakfast – whoops. Although I’m pretty sure some of this is water gain from water retention in my muscles. Probably won’t have a super accurate weight until I take a rest week.)
• Neck: 13” / no change
• Bicep flexing: 12” / no change
• Forearm: 9.75” / 9.5”
• Wrist: 6.25” / 6” (thinking I may have measured incorrectly the first time around, since I have bony-ass wrists and am pretty sure there wasn’t any fat-loss there)
• Across bust: 38” / no change
• Under bust: 35” / 34.5”
• Waist: 34.5” / 33” (Major change!! Gain 3 lbs but lose an INCH AND A HALF OFF MY WAIST? I’ll take that ANY day!)
• Navel: 37” / 35.5” (This was almost more exciting than the above 1.5” change, because let’s face it – this is the area where it’s hardest to lose the belly fat.)
• Hips: 45.75” / 44.75” (WOO!)
• Thighs: 26.5” / 25.75”
• Calf: 15” / 14.75”

And some photos:

I can see the difference, can you? Nolan was helping me! …I need to get a new bicep picture up, also. I feel like my arms are a bit thinner/more defined than a few months ago, but I don’t know that I’ll really be able to tell until I snap a picture.

One of my goals during this Starting Strength program is to more consistently track my progress and take pictures regularly every 2-3 weeks. I look back on my photos and notes, and I know in February I was at about the same body fat percentage I am right now – except that I have no idea what calculator I was using for that estimation, so I really don’t have a realistic comparison. I also feel like my clothes fit better right now than they did at the beginning of the year, but that could very well just be weight shift and not necessarily fat loss overall.

I’m hoping to get up to the local university’s sports medicine center in the next couple months to get a BodPod scan – this will give me an accurate body fat percentage and overview of my body composition in general, as well as my RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) and TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) instead of just the estimations I’ve been using for all these things. So not only will I know what my body fat percentage is, but I’ll also know whether or not I’m eating the right amount of calories every day! I’m excited about it and also terrified at the same time. I’m hoping the body fat percentage will be less than what I’ve been estimating since being pear-shaped can sometimes throw these calculators for a loop, and I’m also hoping that my RMR and TDEE are close to what I’m already estimating and not less… because, well, I like food.

Speaking of food, for those who are wondering I have a daily calorie goal right now of about 2400. This is supposed to be maintenance for me right now. Some days I eat closer to 2100, some days closer to 3000, but I’m averaging right around that 2400 mark and this seems to be working for me. I’m not losing weight and I’m not gaining. We’ll see if this maintenance number continues to work for me as I progress through this lifting program (and once I get my Bod Pod scan results). I’m a-okay with staying the same weight if I can continue my fat loss, and I definitely think taking time off both from calorie tracking and exercise for those weeks was good for me both emotionally and physically. Yes, I gained some fat – but essentially doing a “re-feed” I think will assist in my fat loss moving forward. We’ll just have to see. I think one of the more important things for me right now is watching my diet. Last week my greens went bad and it took me about 5 days before I ran to the store to get a fresh mix… for some reason I also decided it wasn’t particularly important to eat any fruit during these 5 days, either.

Seriously. What.The.Hell.

I definitely need to get back into the habit of doing smoothies for myself, if for nothing more than to get my “5 a day” in. Yes, when I have fresh greens, I eat giant salads almost daily and I have been snacking more on baby carrots and the like, but fruit is definitely important too and an excellent substitute for junk when I get those sweets cravings.

…speaking of sweets, I totally baked some chocolate chip cookies last night using my whole wheat flour for the first time. While I can taste the “wheatiness” in them, they’re still pretty darn delicious – and for large cookies, not too bad calorie-wise (around 180 calories for almost 4” in diameter). 

I want to eat them all.

Ps – I may be changing some things around with the blog. Keep your eyes peeled for adjustments!

Emotional Wreck

Since most of my readers are also my real-life friends, most (if not all) of you probably already knew or at least say my Facebook post earlier today regarding my granddad... but just in case you didn't, here's the news:

My grandfather was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer this week. This comes on top of a pre-leukemia diagnosis last month, as well as the existing congestive heart failure and emphysema he's been dealing with since his heart attack in 2010.

There really isn't much else we know right now. Surgery may not really be an option since his heart function is so low, as well as having low platelets due to his MDS (pre-leukemia) and being rather underweight and weak from just generally being in poor health for the last several months. The chemo and radiation options may just make his quality of life so poor that it may not be worth it... so it's all very difficult right now. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made, none of them easy. Right now we are all just really hoping he can be released from the hospital in order to spend Thanksgiving with the family. I know he's been looking forward to seeing all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren for a while now. 

In the meantime, I'm pretty much an emotional wreck. I spent a good 6 hours yesterday/last night crying on and off, purposely and accidentally. It certainly didn't help that I had a majorly uncomfortable and disappointing meeting regarding work which just added to all the emotional stress. I'm in a very hopeless place right now. 

I am proud to say that I've stuck to my workout schedule this week (so far), though - and it's definitely given me some purpose other than "drink all the wine" or "sleep all the time". It's unfortunate that I woke up this morning feeling pretty sick, but I'm not entirely sure how much of that is a legit virus or just depression/soreness from my workout. My plan is to get about 10-12 hours of sleep tonight and hope that I feel more normal tomorrow - physically normal anyway. 

I began a long post on Tuesday morning about "feeling fat" and my food choices/exercise progress -- but the phone call from my mom regarding Pa-pa's cancer diagnosis sort of derailed the whole thing. I'll possibly rework it and get it up over the weekend or next week sometime. Then again, maybe not. I may be scarce with my blogging for a while. Just bear with me and keep my family in your thoughts and prayers, if you would. 

Regimented Chaos

About 6 weeks ago I had what can really only be described as a mental breakdown... and then I felt better. I felt somewhat normal, but I also was afraid that the normalcy was only a side-effect of kind of "getting it all out", as it were. And I was right. For a couple weeks now, I can feel it all kind of bubbling back up inside. My anxiety has been high - this isn't new news, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in my last handful of posts. It's been high in a familiar but not at all good way. It is not the panic-attack-irrational-out-of-nowhere-for-no-good-reason anxiety... it's the kind of anxiety I've gotten my whole life that tells me "Something bad is about to happen, something big is coming". My immediate thought after the first couple days was that my maternal grandfather might be about to pass. Through a lot of testing that was prompted after his health deterioration back in August, they found out he has Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). This is a type of “pre-cancer” that can lead to Leukemia if left untreated. The treatment is  to have chemo 5 days a month for the rest of his life. The last couple weeks his fatigue has gotten much worse, he's lost a ton of weight, he's lost interest in doing the things he would normally enjoy... it's just really bad. We honestly don't know what will happen moving forward. The hope is that after the second round of chemo, he'll feel better and regain his appetite and weight and live for a very long time thereafter! But, this is cancer... or rather, pre-cancer... so things are very unpredictable right now. My mom left yesterday to go down and be with him during this first chemo round. I’ll probably call her tonight and get an update.

With all this on top of the Mommy Guilt and self-hate I blogged about last week, I’m having this incredibly strong desire to regiment nearly every aspect of my life right now -- I keep coming up with "projects" and lists in my head, I keep thinking, "I should/have to do that/put that together". My somewhat reliable self-awareness has me realizing that this way of thinking is a direct result of feeling like my life is in complete chaos and I’m desperate to get things “under control”.

The best part, though: the stress is making me incredibly attention deficit… so the moment I think of one list to make to assist in my regimentation, I forget what I’m doing and move on to something else. I also keep having thoughts like, “I’m going to get up at 6am and go run tomorrow” – but that never actually happens because a) it’s cold,  and b) IT’S COLD.

Positives of being stressed, depressed, and anxiety-ridden all the time: I like to go to bed early. When I’m not drinking, that is. When you sleep (I don’t know if you guys knew this or not), you don’t have to deal with life! Because you’re unconscious! It’s great! Drinking can occasionally create a similar circumstance of not being consciously aware that life sucks.

(I will say, for those of you who may be worried, I’m sleeping a lot more than I’m drinking. In fact, I would say I’m probably drinking less now than I was a month ago. This is probably due to all my sleeping. Also, let me be very clear that when I speak of my drinking, a lot of this is hyperbole. Because being funny covers up how messed up everything feels, yes? When I say, “I DRANK SO MUCH LAST NIGHT!”, this generally means I had FOUR WHOLE BEERS, or perhaps FOUR GLASSES OF WINE… and we’re not taking, what I like to call, Holly Glasses of Wine [8oz or more], we are talking legit 4-5 oz glasses. Not even a whole normal sized bottle. It’s nothing like, “Yeah, so I drank a bottle of Jack and then chased that with a 12 pack of Budweiser and a bottle cab sav.” – I kind of hate hangovers, so I can be a little wussy about super heavy drinking. Not always, but usually.)

Another positive: I’ve considered sitting down and actually writing some music again… haven’t done that in about 7 years. Mind you, it hasn’t actually happened yet. But I’m actively considering it. This might be a good sign, as it probably means that my crazy brain is trying to figure out creative and productive ways for working through being miserable.

Now, if only I could just get this “work” thing to quit taking up all my time during the day, I could maybe actually get my chaos under control by getting some lists written down - or better yet, compose some music.

Self-Hate, Feminism, Motherhood, and Guilt

It’s November 1^st. This is normally where I do a “check-in”, but I just did one the other day… so instead I’m going to talk about some not-entirely-fitness-health-related Real Life things that are eating away at my very soul. (DRAMA!)

There’s a quote regarding feminism that has floated around the small corner of the internet I frequent, and that quote is:

We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything."Courtney Martin, from Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

Months and months before I ever came across this quote, I remember saying to a friend of mine while discussing how overwhelming it is to be a “modern woman” (wife, mother, housekeeper, personal chef, chauffeur, gym rat, nutritionist, pediatrician, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.), I said to her, “…it’s like, I think to myself, ‘I hate the feminist movement’ – fuck the feminist movement. What has it given me other than the pressure to do and be EVERYTHING and to do and be that everything PERFECTLY? It’s an impossible expectation, to be a ‘true’ feminist… but because we should be able to be and do everything, doesn’t mean we should be expected to be and do everything. But we are. And there’s the crux.”

So, really, I don’t believe “fuck feminism” – but I believe that we, as women, have it skewed in our brains what feminism means and how it is applicable in our Everyday Real Lives. I don’t think I know a single woman, young or old, who doesn’t absolutely believe that they are continually failing themselves, their careers, and/or their families. Whether single or married, executive or waitress, someone with high self-esteem or low. We feel like we are constantly failing at our lives.

…now this is the part where I start talking about myself a lot, so I hope you weren’t expecting some great essay on the feminist movement and its affect on the modern woman! Ha!

I recently took my eldest son, James, for his 8 year check-up/physical/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. He’s grown two and a half inches… and gained 14 lbs. My kid, he’s not a chubby kid – he’s a pretty scrawny kid, actually. But now he has a little belly. A little, flabby belly that flops over his pants… and a torso that has more cellulite than I think anyone wants to see on their child (which I’ve obviously been in denial over for a while now). So, naturally, my pediatrician expresses her concern, asks us to cut back on treats (which, honestly, the kids don’t eat many of to begin with), but mostly says, “Increase the exercise! In almost all instances where I see a kid who is “skinny-fat”, it’s due to lack of exercise.”

This is so, so, so very true. My kid… he is kind of a wussy kid. He doesn’t like to play sports, he’s not a big “go run around outside” person (he likes to play outside – but it’s generally not super physical play)… his passions lie in building amazing buildings and vehicles out of Legos. For hours on end. He loves to draw. He loves to read. And, like all little kids, he loves tv and video games – but tv and video games he doesn’t get much time with except on weekends thanks to how much homework we have and the times we get home from work and eat dinner and all that. He’s not very physically active. Even when we had him in martial arts last year… it just wasn’t his thing. Our youngest is sooooo different – he would live outside if we let him. He RUNS EVERYWHERE, he climbs, he jumps, he wrestles… he’s a very physical kid. James was never this way, even as a toddler/little guy. He enjoys going out and riding his scooter, he likes going to the pool in the summer – but the intensity of that play is not very high. It’s very relaxed play, if you will.

So now I have to find a way to get my kid active. And I will say, he’s forever asking to do my workouts with me… but, and this is going to sound selfish as hell… my workout time is MY time. And it’s about the ONLY “me time” I get during the week.

See? Told you it was selfish and awful.

But I need to do something to make sure he’s getting that physical activity in… and I’m not sure how to accomplish that in the measly 2 hours we have in the evenings between getting-home and going-to-bed. So I looked through our local rec center’s “magazine” that lists all the classes and programs, and I found a Kids Bootcamp fitness class for children 6-11. Great! ….except that I totally dropped the ball on enrolling him, because I had it in my head that I didn’t need to PAY for something like that, that I could do it myself. Because I need to do everything. Because I’m supposed to do everything and be perfect.

This is just one more thing that “proves” what a failure I am as a mother. And if I wasn’t such a failing wife/mother, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with – because it’s only because of my failure at cooking/preparing well-balanced, delicious, and nutritious dinners while simultaneously preparing and providing well-balanced, delicious, and nutritious breakfasts and lunches for the following day that my child is considered overweight by his medical professional and has cellulite covering his little boy torso, and has such little upper-body strength that he can’t pull himself up and out of a swimming pool, for example, without using the ladder or going to the steps in the shallow end to begin with!! (Talk about a run-on sentence…)

Obviously that statement is irrational and holds little place in the realm of “fact”, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that way. Ever. And while I’ve done well to curb my negative inner-monologues regarding my body image/weight, I’ve not done very well on the convincing myself I’m a good person aspect. While I’m slowly learning to love the skin I live in… I don’t really love my inner-self very much most of the time. I mean, how could I, when obviously I’m such a glaring failure at everything I do? Right? (A somewhat sarcastic statement there… somewhat) Shit, I couldn’t even keep on top of life well enough to make some time to carve jack-o-lanterns for Halloween this year. Do you know how awesome that felt? To have to tell your kid, “sorry, we ran out of time for that this year”? We have 3 perfectly awesome pumpkins sitting on our front porch that, I guess, will just remain there as Thanksgiving decorations or something.

Life sure would be a lot easier if I could ever feel like the constant pressure to “do it all” was gone. Even for just a day. Maybe a week, actually. A week might be a better, healthier break. But I don’t know how to do that… to stop trying to do everything would mean I don’t care. But I do care. I care all the time about everything and every night that I don’t cook a “real” dinner and let that load of laundry sit in the dryer for one more day and don’t clean the bathroom and don’t vacuum the bedrooms and don’t make James actively exercise, that is another bit of guilt that is added to the pile. A pile that already looks like this:

Sometimes I’m really good at it. Sometimes I keep it all together, I keep on top of it. Those are the times when things outside of my home life are generally quiet. Work is slow or at least manageable, everyone in my family is happy and healthy, my depression and anxiety are in a lull. Oddly enough these times tend to come when my husband is overwhelmed and stressed and working extra hours all over the place – perhaps it’s because I’m sort of forced into the position of making it all work, as well as put in this place of, “Well, you’re a stressed out mess, so it doesn’t do me any good to be a stressed out mess with you.” …except the last time it didn’t really go down that way. I just drank and slept a lot instead. (SOOO HEALTHY RIGHT?!)

I don’t really know how to wrap this up… I don’t know what else there is to say. I’m finally getting myself back on track with better eating habits and regular exercise, but I can’t seem to motivate to provide the same for my son. And I feel in my very being that this makes me a terrible person and a worse mother and, yet, that just makes me more depressed and less likely to just charge forward and MAKE.IT.HAPPEN. It would also be helpful if every goddamn thing wasn’t an argument or another “reminder” that I have to be on top of… the kid is 8 years old and I have to remind him about 10 times every night to wash his hair while he’s in the shower… and even then, at least twice a week he gets out of the shower with DRY, UNWASHED HAIR. It’s INFURIATING. Mike and I are constantly “reminding”, and it never gets better. The older he gets, there’s more to remind him of… and just writing this right now is making me cry because it is so overwhelming. Just another joy of having a special needs child, who mostly just seems normal, but you have to constantly remind yourself (more reminding!!) that his brain operates on a completely different wavelength that anything you could possibly understand and how could he possibly be bothered to wash his hair when he’s telling a story to himself about an imaginary Lego world filled with all sorts of crazy characters?? Or even just retelling Star Wars to himself for the ONE THOUSANDTH TIME?! What is the washing of HAIR compared to these things??

…it makes me want to die a little bit. It makes me worry for him. How will we make it through high school? College? ADULTHOOD?!

Now I’m kind of going off on another tangent that really won’t lead anywhere, so I’m going to end this here. I’m stressed, I’m pretty angry a majority of the time, I’m losing all hope in people more or less, I have a grandparent who may not live through the rest of the year, I kind of hate my job – but only about 70% of the time so I stay in it, I’m trying to come to terms with being a terrible human being, and I’m trying to be a good parent and a good example on top of all of it.

I guess we could surmise that I’m neck-deep in a quarter-life crisis. Maybe?