My 30 day commitment

Tags

clots, factor V, healthy lifestyle, hypothyroid, Lose Weight, low carb, PE, thyroid, Weight loss

I have decided to make a commitment! I know I have said or thought of this in the past.  I know that I keep saying and failing to do it.  However, this morning I had to think long and hard about what I really want.  After gaining 10lbs over the weekend.  Yes, 10 freaking pounds.  I decided that I really can’t keep doing this.  I logically know that I didn’t gain 10lbs of fat.  It’s fluid. I have to combat against the fluid.  The ONLY thing that has worked with combating fluid was lowering my carb count.  Period! I just HAVE to do this.

I have to treat this like a drug for me.  I thought of this today.  This morning on my way to work I was like ya know, how is it I gain fluid SO much so fast?  Water or not it’s hard to swallow… Then I thought about drugs… While, I know unlike drugs and alcohol I cannot avoid food the symptoms ARE still the same.  I thought about it like drugs and thought, this would be like me taking a drug and getting upset that I got high!

I cannot expect a different result.  The facts for my body are clear.  Higher carb foods despite my calorie counts has major effects to my body.  Cheat days just can’t happen.  Because cheat days turn into multiple cheat days to cheat weeks and etc.  This is a conscious choice.  I CAN decide!  What’s more important to me?  I must have determination.  This isn’t about will power that WILL come and go there is no doubt.  It’s about being determined to live a healthier lifestyle.

I have to drop what seems unfair.  Yes, it’s unfair that some people can do a simple thing like quit soda and lose weight while I have quit far more and didn’t have the same results.  Yes, it’s unfair that I have to exercise more, Yes, it’s unfair that my body holds on to water like it will die without it.  And I am not talking about water that you drink lol.  Yes, it’s unfair that I look the way I do when I KNOW I didn’t eat myself here.  BUT ya know what?  I can’t do anything about that other than to change what I know has given me at least SOME results.

Right now this will be 30 whole freaking days!  The end goal is 90.  I thought long and hard why did I not say 90 and frankly I fear failure right now.  I want to take baby steps and just think of the first 30 days.  However, after the 90 days is up.  IF I can do this plan for a WHOLE 90 days and I DON’T see results THEN I will consult other options.

I know I have several huge risk factors with something like surgery.  It’s not something I will take lightly.  However, I NEED to be smaller.  Not for vanity but for health.  With my clotting disorder I have huge risk factors being over weight.  I MUST find a good formula to make this possible.  I have goals for myself that I want to see.  I have dreams.  I have to make a choice.  And I have.  And I will. 

My hospital trip last night

Tags

clots, diet, fitness, PE, Pulmonary embolism, Weight loss

So the past few days I had noticed some shortness of breath.  Nothing terribly bad but enough to notice.  It totally made Zumba hard to do which I will talk about the Zumba experience tomorrow.

Anyways, after much thought given my medical history it was one of those better safe than sorry cases.  I started out at the outpatient clinic but they decided I needed further testing so sent me to the ER.

Luckily all is well.  They did not find any new clots, however, they did say even though they didn’t find any didn’t mean there were not any OR were any.  Given I am on the treatment already all is good.  AND a shout out to the nurse who did my IV I barely felt it and to boot, a few minutes after she did it, it hit me I had an IV.  Right before she walked out the room I gave her props for it!

I really didn’t want to go because I knew it was probably “nothing” but they insisted that it was a good thing, this way they can try to keep track of the clots if more come about.  As always was told if it comes back or gets worse to come back.

I was there from 3:30pm til about 1 something am.  It was a LONG day…. What made the experience even more fun is it’s a county hospital so all the crazy people go there (and I do mean crazy) and inmates as well… There were a few scary moments to say the least.

BUT I’m a live and “well”…. I am just thankful I wasn’t admitted I hate it there.  Tune in tomorrow to hear about my zumba experience.

 

That was a scare!

Tags

AF, clots, low carb, Pregnancy scare, Weight loss, weight loss blog

So yesterday I started to get alarmed that AF (sorry guys) had not come yet. I am normally like clock work but it had now been 3 days with nothing in sight.  Deep down I didn’t think I was pregnant, but I couldn’t deny the fact that a few weeks ago we had a condom break… Yikes! That’s never happened!

So yesterday M went to sleep early, I knew deep down this was bad!  But figured she would just wake up.  Well, she didn’t.  Not until like 1:30am in which she was ready to be up for the day!  So naturally, we got up and I turned on yo gabba gabba.  I thought that she was going to turn in and give me some more sleep since she seemed tired.  So turned everything off and went to the bedroom when all hell breaks loose.

Apparently, she wasn’t ready.  By this point D and I are both pretty awake despite my efforts to go back to sleep after he took over.  So we are up and he is fixing breakfast.  The question lingering am I or am I not started to really bother me.  With the meds that I am it’s important if I ever suspect it I have to find out right away!  So we both decided to just not wait any longer so at 4am I got a test and phew it was negative.  As much as I would love a baby, it’s just not the time for a ton of reasons!

So I weigh myself, and you should know that the scale is going down yay!  Hopefully this eating will continue to help.  I have been eating mostly meat, veggies and fruit.  No gluten.  So it’s been good 🙂 D left for work, and M and I fell back to sleep until 10am which I began work.  It’s a pretty lazy day.  Like any Wednesday rightfully should be!  Crazy morning to a relaxing afternoon.

Experience does not make you an Expert!

Tags

birth, blood disorders, c-section, clots, factor V, healthy foods, healthy-living, kids, low carb, Pulmonary edema, Pulmonary embolism, right, Weight loss, wrong

Raise your hand if you have ever been given unsolicited advice?  Anyone? Now raise your hand if you have had “professionals” or people of “experience” tell you what is right and wrong for YOU?  Anyone else?

What is it with people becoming all-knowing?  Okay, so yeah at times I am guilty of this too… I think we all are.  We get passionate about something and we forget that sometimes not everyone fits in the tiny little mold we have created.  I really have been striving to learn to LISTEN!  I am a natural talker so even at the age of 30 I have to tell myself to shut up and LISTEN.  I don’t get why we have become accustom to feel we have the answers for everyone?  That just because we have done something similar, or because it’s what we feel we know that we can’t ever be wrong?

I don’t claim to know it all…. While on this journey I know that apart of me started to doubt myself!  See, I had ONE good doctor who believed there was some kind of issues that was causing my weight to just go nuts.  When we found my thyroid was off we thought, bingo that’s it.  Then I still wasn’t losing, so she said go low carb, but that was causing a small amount of weight loss, then all the sudden I had this pain in my leg and low and behold a clot!  I had never experience clots before.  I didn’t know about blood disorders, PE’s (Pulmonary embolism) were some fancy term I would hear on a show like Grey’s anatomy.  It wasn’t something “I” would have!  Nor for sure something “I” would almost die from!

While, my clotting disorder “managed” is not so threatening its when it’s not managed when it is.  Because we didn’t know about it, I was doing things like smoking, and taking birth control pills.  These things now increased my likely hood of having a clot.  Then I quit smoking, quit bc and got pregnant.  I ate well in the pregnancy even managed to not gain much at all in fact I only gained baby and fluid weight.  After birth it went down hill again.  You can read the full story here if you like.. Birth Story

Since then everything has been a struggle.  My thyroid levels went crazy, I got clots in my lungs, my weight started going nuts…. Apart of me REALLY wanted to believe that maybe I just wasn’t eating well… So I cut a ton of things out of my diet, counted calories, started exercising, then exercising more, and cut more things to only lose a little.  I felt defeated.  I knew that there was more to my weigh gain then JUST food but apart of me just wanted to believe I was WRONG!

As much as I LOVE to be right , this time I didn’t!  Changing your diet is easy, I mean it takes commitment and forcing your self to just not do xy and z.  BUT it’s doable if you really want to.  But things like retaining fluid, and finding that your valves are weak to the point your blood just doesn’t flow the way it should through both your legs, is a bit discouraging.  What’s more so discouraging is when people don’t believe you and try to sway you to believe that all YOU know to be true is wrong… As if they have lived in this body for 30 years.

Who is anyone to claim to be an expert of MY body!  Experts and Experienced people all the time feel a need to tell others everything they are doing wrong and when the problem isn’t what is what was “normal” then it must not be right?  Why?  I mean why is it so hard to believe that maybe it’s YOU that is wrong?  I will accept my faults.  It’s why I have done all I have done.  When I was challenged maybe it’s this, I did what I was told and what?  It didn’t work!  So then what?  But all the while I am saying what about this?  And I am ignored.  Until something horribly goes wrong and THEN you agree?  Why does things have to go to the extreme for us to listen?

I am a mom of four children, I have girls and boys, I have been married once, divorced, engaged, in an interracial relationship, had vaginal births, c-sections, bottle fed, breastfed, and so much more.  While I may feel I know some things, I may feel experienced in others one things I am learning is I still don’t know.  I only know of what I personally have went through and the knowledge that I have gained but it doesn’t mean in that same breath that I am now an expert OR that if someone has a different experience that it’s just not possible the cause was from the same source!

I have learned just as quickly as you think you know something you can be just as quickly proven wrong!  I thought birth was simple, I thought because I had three babies I would never need a c-section, I was wrong!  I thought that everything was just calories in vs calories out, I was wrong…. I thought that boys were easier, and found that sometimes they can be just as dramatic as girls, lol I thought that having my last baby would ruin everything when in fact she has brought so much good to everything that I just couldn’t imagine.  I thought I knew everything I could about infants and I still ask questions 4 kids later…. Just because you THINK you know things don’t put everyone and everything in YOUR box.

Instead next time of trying to prove someone wrong, maybe just Listen to them instead and who knows you might actually learn something…. Things are not always black and white.  If we take a moment to step outside of our own bubbles sometimes you find there is just a whole world of things we don’t “really know”.