Diet Fallout

I have been reluctant to write this post simply because this will reveal my weakness and lack of discipline.  But I thought it will do me a lot of good to get this God know what feelings out of my system.

I began R2 the third week of September, loading on 17th and 18th and started on VLCD on the 19th September.  Registered a good loss of 2.7kg the first week, despite cheats here and there and a major cheat on Friday Day 5 of VLCD.

At first I thought R2 will be a walk in the park for me.  My thoughts were since I somehow survived R1, had satisfied whatever cravings I had during Maintenance and Stabilization, surely R2 would be a breeze.  I was prepared for it, I had 6kg to go to get to a health BMI and much as I know that for my height (me being not as tall as Jai, Ogee Karim and Arlin) I should be at least 60kg, I figured at 65kg I would be happy.  I was planning on starting an exercise regime when I get to 65kg and maintain the weight through exercising, which contrary to popular belief, is something that I really would like to get myself into.

R2 a walk in the park it is NOT!

Challenge No 1 : My Mental Well-Being
I must admit that my current job and the stuff on my plate is stressful to the point sometimes I wonder what exactly the stress is all about.  I worry about my work performance, especially in the last two years since I had Harith, I felt that had slowed down tremendously.  I worry about deadlines and working through people, especially when execution is different from what I intended things to get done.  Let's face it, I am a worrywart. More so now when my husband decided to resign and the weight of responsibility lies on my shoulders alone.   He has been out of a job for almost three months now.  There have been quite a few leads but none has been positive so far.  I worry about the state of our financials especially when next year my eldest will be college bound.  And I always feel that I am in this lose-lose situation.  I am not happy with my load at work and I don't have options since I needed to be the breadwinner now.

Put a diet on that state of mind and the combination becomes frequent headaches and eating out of stress.  Not that I atea whole lot like before, but certainly not 100gms of protein and a cup of veggies.

Challenge No 2 : Fatigue, Fatigue, Fatigue
I don't know whether this is just me OR whether others my age feel the same.  I wake up 5am every day, shower, ready myself for Subuh prayers, pray, get ready with work clothes, rush to the bus station in Seremban to catch the 6:30am bus if I am lucky the 6:15am bus.

I sleep at about 11:30pm, wake up and make milk for Harith at about 2am, then sleep restlessly only to wake up at 5am.  Bear in mind that I get back from office the night before on average around 8pm.  Add that the bus trip that is not too comfortable, particularly going back to Seremban, when the evening traffic is worse than morning, compound that further with rain.  The bus ride becomes unbearable when I am hungry and have already taken my HcG pellets.  I get dizzy and sometimes nauseous.

I don't get 8 hours of sleep, I can't sleep on the bus, and I try to compensate my sleep during weekends. And add that to Challenge No 1, where I don't get to do anything productive at all during weekends, and I worry that I am letting life pass by me with this routine.

Challenge No 3 : Being Happy With Myself, Whatever State I Am, Fat or Thin
I hate to say this, but with a lot of my school friends on HcG and losing their kilos, I feel compelled to keep up with that loss too.  Weird eh, but oh so true!

Pyl has lost more than 20kg, Jai, Arlin and Ogee have lost more than 10kg, and here I am feeling miserable with my loss, and not even able to continue to lose my next 6kg.  MrM said that he knew that I was seeing this diet as a competition but did not want to say anything.  Trust MrM to be so supportive with my weight loss and saying that I don't have long limbs when I had asked him if he noticed that my arms are a tad smaller.

When I look at my body in the mirror, I hate my C-section pouch and my body being so straight like a pole. Not like Scarlett Johannsen.  Now you see how I just kill myself with these thoughts.

I should be grateful.  I do have nice legs, or at least I think I do.  I do have nice skin.  But I don't have Scarlett Johannsen's body!

I think I needed to come to my own terms with my own body before I can even begin to lose the weight.  The first 8kg was easy enough because I was not focused on how I look, rather the fact that I needed to lose weight.  The next 6kg I started thinking of wanting to look thin.  Or thinner would be the right word.

I know now that I should be happy with myself.  I should not compare myself with others.  I should be grateful with what I am NOW, not 6kg lighter.  This is really difficult for me since I have always been competitive, school, work and now even weight loss.  But for my long term weight loss sake, I need to come to terms with myself.

Challenge No 4 : Balancing Challenge No 1, 2 and 3 plus kids and a husband
This has got to be the greatest challenge.  I find it hard to remain positive when I am subjected to a daily commute, work, and just plain tired by the end of the day.   To me being positive is the key to everything in how you deal with your lot in this life.  In seeing the possibilities rather than accentuate the negative.  My work consumes me in that I find it difficult to do anything else when so much work outstanding.  This then becomes a vicious cycle of thinking, worrying, not being able to focus, fatigue, demands of husband and kids and what do I get out of all this?  More worrying, more irritation, doing things that add on to the already twisted state of mind.

There you go, phew!  I decided to stop this diet and start exercising.  I have started on the NordicTrack cross -trainer we bought late last year 20 to 30 minutes in one go.  I weigh between 71.5 to 72.8kg now, depending on what I eat the day before.  I still take ACV religiously.  I allowed myself to be comfortable with food.  I believe that this journey has not yet ended, but a pause to allow myself greater success in my weight loss.  I needed to come to terms with all the above challenges and learn to relax.

Until then, I will update this blog occassionally.  Will post on the above challenges in relation to my self discovery and how this all relates to my dealing with food.  Only when I feel ready I will begin again this weight loss journet.