My gift

Brief recap for those of you who may have missed it: My dad has stage 4 lung cancer with no hope of recovery. As I type this, we are at the cancer center having chemo. I haven't handled this well. Physically, I gained back 10 of the 81 pounds I had lost. Mentally, I've been overwhelmed. I go to the doctor tomorrow.

Now............I want to tell about the gift my mother-in-law gave me. She is a retired cancer center nurse, so she knows what I'm going through. She came and got my kids and took them to her house (2.5 hours from me) for the next two weeks (they left yesterday). She gave me the gift of time. Time to take dad to his appointments without worrying about finding a babysitter for the kids. She gave me the ability to focus on MY health and taking care of Me for a change. Hubby and I are eating healthy and I'm going to exercise classes that I wouldn't have been able to attend otherwise.

And already, the weight is coming off. It's a great feeling when you take care of yourself.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I haven't always handled the "dad's cancer tragedy" as well as I would like. I've had days that I've fed my emotions. a lot. I'm up about 7 pounds from my lowest (which was in September). Depressed. Not doing well. I want to be honest.

When you feed yourself junk, and a lot of it, not only do you gain weight, but you get sick and feel bad. I've felt horrid.

I was going to go to the doctor but I lost my insurance card.

A little less than 24 hours ago, I started taking St. John's Wort and I hope the initial results keep up. I have felt better. Not amazing, but better. And I am determined to feel myself healthy foods and cut out the junk that makes me sick.

Because I need to.

I just wanted to post this because I want it to be real. And this is life right now. And I'm still going to lose weight and be healthy and be the queen. Sometimes there's just a bit of ugliness in the beauty. And I don't want to lie and pretend it's all beautiful.

All is well that ends well.

Dealing with it & manipulating valid excuses

Dad's cancer results came back bad. Very. Stage 4. Four to eight months to live. wow.

It's one of those things that you just can't understand unless you've been there. I didn't realize that before.

And so, yeah.......it's been hard. I won't bore you with details and a pitty party.

We had a surprise birthday party for dad and I made a ton of cupcakes and did the "cake batter therapy" thing. I stood in my kitchen and ate half a batch of cake batter and cried on the inside and justified it because my dad is dying. MY DAD IS DYING, SELF, GET OFF MY CASE ALREADY. Yeah...I have conversations with myself in my head. And I think what I'm going through is a pretty valid thing. I mean, your dad doesn't die every day.

But no. Regaining weight will make me feel worse. I deserve better than that. I NEED heatlhy food to pull me through. I need to take care of me.

I decided to manipulate my excuse and say "My dad is dying. Therefore, I must take care of me!" That's so much better than "My dad is dying. Therefore, I will eat 5,000 calories today."

So even though I was super busy, I dropped the kids off at the library, paid ten whopping dollars for a day pass to the gym and poured my emotions out on the treadmill. It had been several months since I'd done a 5K, so I was pretty out of practice....but I did a 5K on that treadmill that day and beat my personal best time by 2 minutes. Because my heart was in it. Or rather, I poured my heart out into it. I ran until I couldn't run, then I walked, then I ran some more. I was dripping sweat and it was good. Sweat therapy. yes. I need it during all of this.

I could go on and on about cancer but I want this blog to be about weight loss, not cancer. So yeah.

I can make healthy choices in the face horrible stuff. Yep. You can too.