Edited: Post-Op Week 77 Progress Report: Riding the Struggle Bus

This week, my photo post is going to be late as I’ve been out of town for the holiday.  I’m still on the road at the moment–we are stopped for the night in Louisiana.

This week was pretty terrible in terms of self-care.  We were at my mother in-law’s for the week, and going there wrecks my eating and activity routine every time, and I hate that it does.  There is nothing in that environment that is healthy, no matter how hard I try to make it so, my best efforts are crushed by the fact that all we do is Sit. All. Day. Long.  This happens because it is all my MIL can do as she is disabled and her health is not the best.

It’s bad when you look for opportunities to get out of the house not because you don’t want to visit, but because it means you can get off your ass and be active.  What sucks about this is that I feel incredibly guilty for feeling like I need to do this.  And I hate that.

My body is not accustomed to 12-16 hours of inactivity each day, but that’s exactly what happened all week long.  So why didn’t you just go for a walk? you’re probably thinking.  That would have been awesome had it not rained nearly every single day we were gone. The week of inactivity didn’t help me on the scale either–I am up 1.2 pounds this week, and I am fairly certain it is attributable to the sheer lack of activity I had all week long. This really pisses me off because I know that had I been able to go to the gym or just walk around all day long, I would have at the very least been able to maintain the loss I had last week. But no. I’m up, and I am not happy about it.

I hated how sitting all freaking day made me feel physically and mentally.  It took me back to seeing and feeling like the 440-pound me.  I hated being sedentary most of the day each day.  I hated feeling restless.  Most of all, I hated feeling guilty for wanting to leave the house just so I could get some kind of activity into my day.  My MIL is my husband’s only surviving parent so we try to visit as often as time and finances allow since she cannot travel to see us. So when we go, time is a precious commodity since there is not much of it. Any time spent out of her house is not time spent visiting with her, so I feel incredibly guilty leaving the house to go anywhere.

There are a lot of other issues here that I don’t think I should flesh out publicly so I will conclude with this:  I am glad to be going home, where I can go to the gym when I want for as long as I want without feeling guilty for wanting to get out of the house and be active.  I am glad to be going home where my environment is set up for success, and where I have the tools I need to get to my goal. I’ll post my photos tomorrow once I am home again.  Also?  The plan this week is to get to the gym at least 3 times before school starts again on Monday, and to set a new workouts goal for 2015 of 130 workouts. I did 100+ in 2014, so I am certain I can hit 130 in 2015, even with knee surgery looming large in the spring.