January Challenge

 

I am doing this challenge come January. Ive come a long way from Full tasting sodas to diet and zero sugar although I'm still sure somewhere in those sodas is still some type of sugar. I use to drink sodas all the time 24/7. Soda was what my coffee is now to me. 😄 Well with me being pre-diabetic I have been working to count down on soda all the way around but I want to get to the point where I'm rarely ever drinking it if at all. 

And of course with me being 56 now my body isn't so forgiving as it was in my 20s. The doctor did have me on Ozempic, needle injections in a pen. We both thought it might help no only the diabetes but the weight loss. NO, NO, NO, and Hell No. It was causing me sever stomach pains, extremely bad gas and excessively gross belching. It got to the point where I had to go to the ER and then they sent me to a specialist that ran test on me. I was advised to stop Ozempic immediately which I did. Not a problem that way since.

When I first started my weight loss journey several years ago I weighed 249 lbs. I'm now down to 225 lbs. And I've kept that 25 or so pounds off for years. But I really need to start and get serious about my health and changing things for the better. I should have been doing this all year but I wasn't ready. I wasn't in place to where I could change my mindset. 

Yes, I've considered weight loss surgery but Im not going to put myself or my family through that. I know it's a tool that has helped many people but since I started this journey years ago I've learned that change doesn't happen without change. And for me that would be going from one extreme to the other. Weight loss surgery isn't going to heal the ROOT of my weight gain problems. And all it would do is cause us more $$$$$ stress. 

I found a quote that fits my journey:

No diet can give you the spirit of self control. 

I can't remember who wrote it but its true. No diet, no pill, no routine, no quick gimmick or anyone else for that matter is going to give you self control. When I first found out I was PD I started to do my own form of fasting. I had never been able to fast and go hours without eating so I started each day seeing how long I could go without needing to eat and each day I did it for longer and longer periods of time. I still do this. It has helped me realize I didn't need to be constantly eating or forcing myself to eat because everyone else was eating. I still find myself stress/emotionally eating at times. It's not as bad as it was in the beginning of my journey. In the beginning I not only ate to deal with this but I also smoked. I got to the point where I looked at it this way better to eat then smoke. I was in denial of that one but I quit smoking. 

This journey to gaining back my health has been a long road. I've had to fight for it on all levels, physical, mental, emotionally. I had gotten to a point where I just didn't care about myself. I had convinced myself that I wasn't a good mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend if I didn't put myself last. I hit major burn out. 

I'm lucky because right now I have the chance to not being diabetic at all. But the choice is mine, just like it was my choice not to care about what I ate, drank or put in my system. I do not like doctors at all and especially dentist because I have had some really bad experiences with them. Over the last year and a half I've had to really sit down with myself and do some heavy soul searching about my health. That was hard as hell. It caused me a lot of pain to get over the pain that helped put me in this situation with myself. 

I would like to reach a 45 lb loss by the end of 2024. That means I'd have to lose about 3 lbs a month. I have went from full flavor stuff down to either diet or zero sugar, that's a start. I don't drink alcohol so thats not going to be a problem. I have cut down on eating out a lot. That has helped. I do write everything down of what I eat and drink. It's a process. But at the moment this is where I'm at.