Round

It has felt like the number 199 has been avoiding me on the scale.  This week I’ve seen 198 and even 197 (okay, I admit, it was 197.6), but 199? Nope.  I’ve also seen 200, and 201, but really wanted to break out of the 200s again this week, and this time for good.

But did the scale cooperate this morning? Nope, showed at 200.2 first thing.  But I suffered, didn’t eat breakfast, and a few hours later finally saw the 199 I was waiting for, and now THAT is going to be my official weigh in for the week.  Goodbye 200s (even if a little itsy bitsy cheating was involved).

I think that 199 thinks it’s my goal, and therefore it’s been eluding me.  But in fact 199 is just a passing point for me — my goals don’t involve 199 for more than a blink of an eye, so it can relax.

Being back solidly in the 19xs will be a big thing for me - I was able to stabilize in this range for many years and in fact have several boxes of clothes that have “195″ written on them - that I plan to get down and try on once my weight is below that number.  It’s still a ways off - this isn’t happening fast, but that’s okay.

Just relax, 199, you are not my target.  You are above my target.  I plan to let you go next week and let some other person try to hunt you down, while I cosy up to your friends lower in the 190’s for the next month or so.

As I was typing this title I realized this is in fact true in many areas of my life, but I actually meant my weight when the title first occured to me.

But there will be new goals for other areas too - building a family, managing my weight, simplifying my life, being happy in general.  They say cancer does that, that one (very scary) word and diagnosis just shifts everything around and priorities shift, become clearer.  Now that I’m mainly over the shock of the endometrial cancer diagnosis, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I need a hysterectomy (and thus our pursuit of building a family becomes even more complicated, technology-enhanced, and expensive).   We have a plan forward (fingers crossed it all works out) and I am now able and ready to move forward in peace.

I made the decision this week to revisit all my goals and plans - I’ve used Best Year Yet for most of the past decade and I decided to re-visit that, as the roles and goals are all changing, and there is nothing saying I need to wait for some mystical day on a calendar to do it.

I also changed my ticker this week.  I don’t have a final goal weight.  I’ve been at this weight battle far too long to believe in such fairy tales.  I am now taking the approach of doing a good weight loss approach that I can live with long term, and letting my weight decline and then settle where it will. (Although I sincerely hope that it will settle at least around a US size 12).

My first weight goal was to get back under 200 because being above again was really scary and horrible to me.  It’s not offical yet, but Monday’s weigh in will put me back under 200 (where I was before vacation) and this time it will be permanent.

So my next goal for my weight will be to get back to 183.  It’s a good goal because it’s meaningful and significant.  It represents another 18 or so pounds, so it will take a good while to achieve (I’m always a slow loser - I no longer bemoan it, I just accept it and work with it).  Being back at 183 will put me solidly in ‘regular people’ clothes in the US and even start to touch them in France in one or two shops (knock another 20 at least off to be able to shop comfortably in most stores in Paris).

185 is the weight I maintained for about 5 years before gaining again 2 years ago, so there is also a real sense that once I get there I can set the bar there (although it would be nice to keep losing).  The specific number of 183 is the weight I was on my wedding day, so it seems a good target to have, especially since the number sticks out so clearly in my mind.

If I knock the goal down to 179 I get the BMI out of the “obese” category, but it just doesn’t have the same emotional connection to me, so I’m keeping the next goal line on 183.

Here’s my ticker, set to the new goal:

Well, despite a one-week serious focus, the scale is telling me that for sure I gained 2 stupid pounds on vacation, putting me back over the damn 200 mark (at 201) several days running (it was worse when I first got back).

But, I’ve been seriously back on track for over a week now, and other than eating 3 figs fresh off the tree at our house in the South of France (heavenly, and impossible to resist!) I’ve been a very good diligent low-carber.

I’ve been in ketosis solidly for about 4 days now, and the hunger and grumpiness have gone away - but those first days were tough.  The hardest was probably Wednesday night, when my husband proposed an impromtu outing after an appointment which meant eating out and then grabbing a movie - great except the road to temptation through the restaurant (did fine) and then the theatre (had nothing but it was HARD).

I need to get back to exercise now that I’m pretty well back into my normal life again.  Of course I’ve said this every day for a week now…

I’m making progress on many fronts these past few days :

I’m back on the low-carb diet hard core these past 3 days and the scale is showing it, so next week’s weigh in should be a good reflection of where I really am, in that the carb bloat should be gone by then.  I’ve also been drinking tons and tons of water and tea, and feeling better for it.

I’ve unpacked and done tons of laundry and have only 3 small piles of stuff from vacation to finish putting away (including a pile of books that I don’t have room for…).

I contacted a surrogacy lawyer and we had a conference call with her yesterday.  She seems knowledgeable and thorough, my husband (also a lawyer) was reassured by her answers and her honesty (when she didn’t know, talking about risks, referring certain aspects to lawyers specialized in other fields, etc).   It seems like the pieces of this complicated puzzle are starting to fit into place.

I had a conversation with my boss about what is going on.  She’s been great and has only had the vaguest notions of what’s going on, but I told her pretty much everything yesterday (without emotion, yeah me!).  I’m back at work now and for the next few weeks, but then will be in the US for the IVF collection for 10 days or so in late Sept, a week or so before that will be unable to travel due to the shots I have to take, and then after the embryos are made & frozen I’ll have the hysterectomy - which will put me out of commission for several more weeks at least.  In short, although right now I could be back 100%, it’s a very small window, and it would be very disruptive to my team for me to come back for 3 weeks and then go away again for 3 months, so we agreed that I will just stay in the background and follow things from a distance except for a few projects that were always mine anyway.  I’m lucky she’s been so understanding and kind, it’s taken a lot of pressure off.  I’m also going to tell my team the big lines of what’s going on next week.  It was too painful to talk about without crying before my vacation, but now that I’ve had more time to get used to it & we have a plan in place I can live with, I find I’m able to talk more calmly about it. 

I also think I managed to fix my computer. I took a ton of pics on vacation and the second to last night as I was importing them I moved the computer and the external drive which holds all my photos disconnected.  Since then hadn’t managed to get to them, but I’ve been researching how to repair it and bought a new external disk and some software and it looks like it’s working (currently running in the background).  Now the new disk will be my media disk (photos, music & video) and the old external disk will become what I’ve needed for a while now - a BACKUP!

I haven’t managed to get myself to exercise - not sure why, as I have planned to each day and it’s not a lack of time, but I’ll attack that next week.

Well, eating carbs when you’re on a low carb diet is like heroin - it’s hard to stop once you start.

I have plenty of excuses (see prior post), and a husband who is such a pleasure-seeker that he can’t deny anyone else (”Oh, go ahead, you’ve been so good recently” “Oh, don’t you just want a little taste of home?”), but the bottom line is that I just lost focus.

One thing that is very dangerous with low carb eating is cheating.  In any diet cheating is not good (and I’m using “cheating” just in a diet-ish way meaning ‘the food you’re not supposed to eat, or are supposed to restrict’, because fundamentally I don’t believe it’s really cheating - it’s just a choice.  On low carb you are eating foods that are very high in caloric density.  The diet works because of human biochemistry - if you don’t eat the carbs your body has to make them, and it makes them by dipping into your fat.  But it means you really do have to keep the carbs very low, and so if you cheat you don’t get the benefit and instead get all the calories.  Not only do the excess calories convert to fat (like on any diet), but also your body stores of carbohydrate, once depleted, re-fill, and in the re-filling store lots of water with it - making the scale jump up by leaps and bounds, well beyond the impact of the extra calories themselves.

If you don’t get it under control, you regain, and often after low-carb diets people put on the weight they lost plus several extra pounds in the blink of an eye.  If you do go for control, you face the same ‘induction’ trials as the first time - needing to cut carbs back drastically for a week or two to get rid of the carb stores again and get back to burning fat.

The good news is that I’m doing the second option - back in control, and will have a very focused week.

The scale wasn’t pretty (but not shockingly bad either) yesterday upon arriving back from California, but I’m hoping that after a week or so of solid focus I’ll be seeing Onederland again.

I am a creature of habit.  One of my top coping mechanisms for stress is to eat.

I’m on vacation.  I am not supposed to be stressed, but every time I have to dive back into the medical issues of this stupid endometrial cancer, there it is.

Things seemed to be going well - I managed to barely cry despite seeing my whole family (including newborn neice, hugely pregnant cousin, and many phone calls with my hugely pregnant sister who finally had her son on Monday).  {Anyone who has struggled with infertility knows that new babies and pregnancy news just reminds you of what you want & can’t have - it’s not that you’re not happy for others, but you’re sad for yourself}

My sister who had offered to be a surrogate for us but the timing was a problem (she’s pregnant now with her 3rd) found a friend of hers who wants to be a surrogate, and is a midwife by profession, dramatically reducing the huge stress of finding someone with good motivation who we think will be a safe and healthy gestational carrier.  We spoke with her.  We like her. My husband is happy with it.

But the US fertility expert (one of the very top clinics in the country) threw a small wrench in the works 10 days ago by telling me that our chances for success would be considerably higher if we did the egg collection / IVF before the hysterectomy instead of after it, as apparently the hysterectomy will significantly reduce blood flow to the ovaries.  He’s willing to do it after, of course, but felt it important we know, and said we were only talking about 10 days of elevated estrogen in this scenario.

I had to put calls in to my doctors in France - good luck trying to reach the French professionals in August (vacation season).  Luckily my fertility doc had told me he’d take my call over the holiday, and he ran interference with the gyn-oncologist for me (he agreed with the US doctor, and managed to convince the oncologist that the risk was minimal).  The timelines were getting stressful, as my surgery date was for Sept 1st, and my next period should be around Aug 25th, and if were are going to do this I needed to get some medication shipped to me in LA before my flight back to France on Saturday, so the day was full of phone calls and organizing, and then having to re-start the explanations to my family (many doctors, so long technical discussions).  In the end it seems everyone thinks its a reasonable approach.  The risk that the one extra month and 10 days of high estrogen push this cancer to something more agressive is pretty low.  The chance of success of a gestational carrier having our baby is higher.

During these past days, the stress monster returned, kept under tight control for the most part by yours truly (excepting my extreme neediness towards my husband).  My birthday eating started to show some of the cracks of the control, as I’d planned to have cake and ice cream, but nothing else carby for the treat - instead ’special treats’ started the night before my BD and continued off and on for a few days.  And came back today, first in the form of 1/3 a bag of popcorn at the movies (must say that US movie popcorn beat French popcorn hands down, and popcorn has always been a favorite).  Then for dinner had about 1/4 of one of those (incredibly salty) blooming onion things as an appetizer - ostensibly so my husband could try it, but who do I think I’m kidding?

I know that neither are the end of the world, but I also know the beginning of a problem when I’m in it.

Hopefully coming here and sharing what I’m going through will help me get back on track.

I’m also grappling with what to do/say at work.  My boss knows the big items but is someone who is incredibly discreet.  But all this work stuff can wait until Monday when I really am back at work and can discuss it with my boss.

Until then I have a bit of vacation left that I plan to enjoy — carb free!

Assuming the scale in the Clement Monterey Intercontinental fitness center was not way off, I’m still in Onederland.  Barely.

Our third stop this trip was a house we swapped in San Diego (friend of my brother’s, who will use our house in Paris next summer).  He had a bathroom scale that showed dreamy numbers … until my other brother (who was staying with us) mentioned that it was 10 pounds off.  I knew it read low, but 10 pounds?  Yikes.

A few days later, at the end of the day, the hotel in Monterey showed 199.5 so I’ll assume a decent morning weigh in would be lower by a bit.  It was also my birthday, and the celebration lasted longer than it should have.  The day before my birthday I had onion rings and french fries largely because we hadn’t had dinner and by the time we found food I was starving and both were served as appetizers.  The next day was my birthday, and both breakfast and lunch were low carb, but dinner (and dessert) were not.  The morning after I did not have a low carb breakfast (had on piece of toast, 1/4 of a waffle and several bites of pancakes).  Today was the end of the carb festival, with 6 french fries and my long-sought real cake for dessert at lunch (on my birthday I had ice cream, but the restaurant had no cake…).

All in all it hasn’t been hard to eat low carb on vacation here in California.  I’m sometimes tempted but I’ve learned that goes away quickly once I eat my own food and have calmed the hunger beast.  Everywhere I go I carry walnuts and beef jerky with me, and I’ve eaten a lot of sunflower seeds.

We have a few days left.  My stepson is asking for In n Out burger again, so one more meal that is easy for me.

The trip has been great - we really liked Sequoia although there was too much driving between where we stayed and the Giants Forest.  Saw 2 bears and 6 deer the day we were there, so it was pretty cool.

The other big news?  I think we have found our gestational carrier.  A friend of my sister’s, the woman is a midwife and really serious and has been looking into being a surrogate carrier for several months.  We talked live today and it seems like we’re on the same page, so next step is finding a lawyer and drawing up a contract.  Yipee!

I wouldn’t say our vacation has been terribly relaxing nor very strenuous, but it’s been fun so far.  We’re now about halfway through.

My diet is going great, however.  I had one of my planned treats - Cold Stone ice cream (sweet cream with pecans and roasted almonds) a few nights ago (didn’t finish it even) and I will have both cake and ice cream on Saturday (my birthday).  The West coast bagels don’t tempt me, and other than missing enchiladas (which I might allow myself once) I haven’t felt a strong desire for anything that doesn’t fit my low carb diet yet.

The hardest have been the theme parks - all the snacks are sugar and dough, and the meals are basically pizza or flimsy sandwiches, but armed with a bag of beef jerkey and some nuts in my purse I’ve made it through.  Now the theme parks are behind us (thank god) so it should be easier.

What’s kept me going have been having our own kitchen most of the time, buying organic bacon (which doesn’t really exist in France), making eggs in the morning, and having marscapone in the fridge at night (if everyone else had a big dessert I know I can have a few spoonfuls when I get home).  I’ve actually had relatively little of it (and little of the 99% chocolate I brought with me from France to keep myself from feeling deprived).

Other than the Big Salads which are available in just about every restaurant in California, there has been In ‘n Out burger and their “secret menu’” of “Protein Style” where they replace the bun with chunks of fresh lettuce.  Luckily both my husband and stepson have loved In ‘n Out, so we’ve been 3 times so far.  They are delicious and 100% compatible with my diet, yeah!