is how I feel this week.

I have felt exhausted and numb every day this week.  Every day, I just sort of went through the motions of the day and didn’t feel present each day.

I hate feeling like that.

My stepmother’s condition has not improved too terribly much, and from the sounds of it, right now things are just in a holding pattern until the end.

I am not ready to watch my father go through the pain of losing his wife.  I am not ready for what to do except be there.

I am trying to keep things together for my siblings as they watch him go through this process too, and trying to keep things together for me too while trying to take care of myself.

There have been times this week when I thought about eating my old standby comfort foods–enchiladas, chips and salsa, pasta, pizza.  Fat Girl really needed some soothing this week, and food is her medication of choice.

But Thinner Girl gently reminded Fat Girl that the foods she wanted wouldn’t fix anything or make things better.  She let her know that the foods Fat Girl wanted wouldn’t help Thinner Girl help her Dad feel less scared about the eventuality of what’s coming.  That the foods Fat Girl wanted to relieve her stress wouldn’t help Thinner Girl be strong for the family.  If nothing else, the foods Fat Girl wanted would make Thinner Girl feel worse about everything happening this week, and would likely make her feel physically ill.  Thinner Girl also reminded Fat Girl about the cute clothes she’s been able to wear for the past few months, and the Talbots gift card burning a hole in her pocket that she wants to use tomorrow to buy some smaller clothes for the spring since they’re having a sale.

These are the conversations I have to have with myself when I want to stress eat.  This is the coping mechanism I’ve developed:  talking with myself about why I want to self-medicate, and reminding myself that food is a poor elixir for what’s bothering me.  It’s what’s working so far.  It beats the hell out of eating away the stress and the pain, because really…what does that solve?

Absolutely NOTHING.

A bag of Hot Fries is a poor problem solver.

I am worth more than any comfort food.

I am better than anything could ever taste.

I am worth fighting for.

And that has been the toughest lesson to learn on this journey so far.  I think it’s finally being pounded into my head.

Tomorrow will mark 7 months post-op for me.  I was telling my husband at dinner tonight that things were feeling very surreal for me right now and that the time had simply flown by.  I thought back to where I was a year ago:

• I weighed around 400 pounds.
• I was hypertensive.
• I was a Type 2 diabetic.
• I had hyperlipidemia.
• My joints ached and creaked.
• I couldn’t run.
• I couldn’t get from my car to my classroom without being winded.
• I taught sitting down pretty much all day long.
• I ate mindlessly.
• I was wearing the biggest sizes that you could still find in a store.

And now?  The only one of those things that is remotely true any more is that my joints do still ache and creak, just not as much as they once did.  And I am cold all the time now, but I think that’s owing to the fact that I’m much less insulated than I once was.  As I told my Dad at the hospital tonight while we were visiting A, “I can handle being cold better than I can handle being fat.”

Tomorrow morning after I get my blood drawn for follow-up blood work my PCP wants, I plan to hit the gym, then have breakfast with my hubby.  After breakfast, we’ll cruise by Costco to pick him up some protein shakes, me some water for work, and then go hold vigil at the hospital with my Dad for a little bit.  We want to be able to spend time as much with A as we can while she is still lucid and able to hold conversations with us.  I would also like to ask her nurses if she or my Dad have been visited by a social worker or chaplain from the hospital.

This year has not gotten off to a good start.  I only hope that the remainder of the year is better than it has been so far.

Today was an okay day food-wise.  I underestimated how much food to prepare myself this week so I was stuck eating leftover slider patties at lunch today, which I really didn’t want since they were beef.  I was trying to avoid beef this week.  Rather than run the risk of eating junk, I decided to pack those for lunch.  They were higher in fat than I like my lunches to be, but oh well…

I got in 986 calories, 88 grams protein, 39 grams of carbs and (gulp!) 51 grams of fat.  I drank a gallon of fluid today as well.  I had a lot more fat than I like, but tomorrow is a new day and another chance to improve.

Today’s food choices, from upper right: Applegate chicken breast slices; Rudy’s ham, bacon, egg and cheese breakfast bowl; ground sirloin slider patties with Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese; multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, iron supplement; blackened rainbow trout with etouffee and red beans and rice; Emerald cinnamon roasted almonds. Not shown: packet of 2 saltine crackers.