Struggles, Stress, and Sabotage

My friend, Barbara, commented during our scrabble match, “You haven’t blogged in awhile.” And I admitted that my life had been under attack from various angles. First, my dishwasher blew up or as Rob puts it, “Someone let the smoke out.” There was a telltale burned scorch mark on the outside of the dishwasher and when he investigated, he discovered the guts of the circuit board had been fried. I can live without an oven, I can live without a cooktop stove, I can even live without a sink, but take away my dishwasher—and them’s fighting words!

So Rob said, “Guess you better do some research and see which dishwasher you would like.” Luckily, just a few weeks before I had been listening to my friend, Lori, sing the praises of her new dishwasher, a Whirlpool Gold GU3600XTVY, so I called her for the make and model. Her praise was so amazing, I immediately searched every store, dealership, and vender, I could find, and guess what, NO ONE HAD ONE! They were all on back order. Rob said, “As long as we are getting a dishwasher, we may as well get an oven to replace ours that goes ballistic every once in a while.” So for the past two months, I have been hunting for the best product and deal around. I called all my friends and asked them about their dishwashers. Rob wanted the same manufacturer so the appliances would look the same, but he was convinced that Whirlpool didn’t make ovens or at least if they did, they weren’t very good. So after calling my friends, copying pages out of consumer reports, and reading customer complaints and praises on the Internet, I passed on the Frigidaire and Kitchen-aid, and bought the Whirlpool Lori suggested at the beginning of my search from Frederick’s Appliance for the best deal--$500 for the dishwasher and $2000 for the oven, but they were both great deals, free delivery and free 2 year warranty.

Unfortunately, the oven was not on back order and so we got immediate delivery and because Rob was opposed to replacing our 24-inch oven with a 24-inch oven—it’s too small for the pans he bought me years ago and wanted to show me that his gift was very thoughtful--he insisted on getting at least a 27-inch built-in double oven. So since the 27- and 30-inch were the same price we went for the 30-inch double oven.

Getting a larger oven necessitated remodeling. Now, I don’t know about you, but somehow I started going through post traumatic stress meltdown when I have to work with Rob on any project but especially a kitchen project! Argh, that’s my home territory! And I knew that Rob would take forever, so how was I going to keep the wheels turning, the meals coming, and the clean-up going when my kitchen was torn up and in chaos? The first weekend, after Rob had taken all the cupboards and cabinets out and crowded them against the sink and cooktop and pushed the refrigerator against the cabinets blocking the entry way into the kitchen and making it impossible to open the fridge door, I said, “Darling, I can still reach the microwave. We can have Lean Cuisine frozen entrees or eat out at Las Margaritas!” When Jackie saw the pictures of our torn up kitchen, she said, “I guess you’re going out to Las Margaritas a lot!” But in truth, we only went out once (to celebrate Jackie’s birthday)—she couldn’t make it, so we celebrated her birthday with her in absentia.

During the time of the kitchen chaos, Alexa’s boyfriend, Brandon, came for a visit and that in itself was stressful, not his visit per se, but the gut feeling that this was an impending train wreck waiting to happen. As I struggled to keep myself calm, pleasant and understanding while my whole body is poised to attack like a mama bear protecting her cub, I realized that stress is not really a good thing when you want to lose weight. In fact, for some stress makes them lose weight, but for me, it is like a natural defense mechanism and the body will store fat forever! And so when I was in sniffing distance of my 50-pound weight loss goal, 1.4 pounds away, I hit the wall and whamo! Gained 5 pounds in 4 days! It has been ten days since that major debacle and I am proud to say I have lost .4 pounds in 10 days! That is the story of my life! I can work and exercise, diet and count calories, lift weights, and swim laps, but when my body says, “You ain’t going nowhere!” Nowhere is where I go!

On Tuesday, June 8th, I went back to see Dr. Clinch (we have a meeting every six weeks wherein he asks me how I’m doing). I explained to him that I hit that plateau of plateaus. I hit this plateau every single time I want to lose weight—WeightWatchers, FitDay.com, doctor-directed diets, whatever---I lose almost 50 pounds, like 2 or 3 pounds away from it and my body stops losing weight. It is the weirdest thing; however in diets past, I have been rabid! All I could think about was how hungry I was. Not literally, but mentally. As I said in my previous blogs, the voice of the siren was overpowering. I had to “jump ship” and run to the fridge and gorge. But now, the sirens are somewhat silenced and although my frustration level is high, I say, “Oh well, it’s a plateau, let’s see who can outwait whom!” The good thing is that lots of people are noticing I look thinner and have been commenting on it, so even though I am frustrated, I have decided that my body is in “tightening mode” and so I just keep on keeping on. The bad thing is that I am not losing weight. Dr. Clinch said, “It’s not the numbers on the scale; don’t focus on that. If you are going down dress sizes and losing inches, that’s what you should be happy about, I mean people don’t notice how much you weigh, but how you look.” (I am thinking, he is missing the power of the scale, I’m sorry, but when one is morbidly obese NUMBERS do matter!) Then I told him that I don’t understand it, I lift weights, work out on the cardio machines, swim laps, and count calories! And Dr. Clinch says, “Oh, well if you are lifting weights, you are gaining muscle and muscle weighs more than fat!” I WANTED TO SLAP HIM!!! I have been lifting weights for 3 years!!! But I didn’t slap him, I only smiled and said, “Yeah, right.”

So my struggling has caused me stress which in turn has made me want to sabotage myself. I think, “Why not treat yourself to a dark chocolate acai blueberry treat?” or “A delicious skinny cow chocolate/vanilla ice cream sandwich.” Albeit these foods are not as death-dealing to my diets, as others have been in the past, but they keep me away from seeing progress. Dr. Clinch told me to aim for 1000-1200 calories, and I’m thinking, “I carry around an extra 150 pounds, shouldn’t that count for something?” I mean when I was going to Weight Watchers the more you weighed the more points they allowed you because you were exercising every minute you stood up or walked. And then when you lost weight, you had to cut back on the number of points you could eat. So if I cut back from 1500 to 1200, does that mean when I have only 30 pounds to lose, I’ll be eating 400 calories?

At this point, I try to get an eternal perspective and come up with some great eternal truth. The fact of the matter is that sometimes despite our best efforts, things don’t work out the way we want them to or the way we have planned and that somehow even with the monkey wrench jammed into the machine, there is still something that defies our understanding. We feel like we should be able to make some sense out of the problem, but instead it makes no sense. That is how I feel. Why do I need to struggle to reach this goal? Why couldn’t I just eat less, exercise and lose weight on a consistent basis. Why do pounds stop dropping and things look like I am failing? The reason is that I need to look outside myself. Stop stressing. Forget myself, keep struggling and working out and keep at it. Persistence is the final push. It is enduring well, despite the discouragement and depression. It is overcoming the obstacles and still smiling. Losing weight has never been easy and being on a plateau is definitely the pits, but for now, it’s slow and steady wins the race despite how slowly the tortoise crawls, he eventually will cross the finish line as long as he keeps on going. I am discouraged, but not despondent; I am depressed, but not demoralized, I am disheartened, but I still have hope and that is finally the ultimate gift—HOPE! I hope you all keep on struggling, because in the end, the joy of the journey is in the doing!