In my previous post I mentioned a plan. It’s a good plan, but not a new one. 

I need a good wake up. My dad has been diagnosed with diabetes and suffered a heart attack all in 6 months and I’ve still been living in denial. 

I go out of my way to avert my eyes when I get out of the shower, or see myself in a full length mirror. I make myself as small as possible when I’m in public and I drape myself in black. I’ve been wearing spanx type of underwear almost everyday for the probably last year with a stretchy undershirt tucked in as well. It’s all about the illusion. 

Last night I decided to be real with myself. I stripped down to a bra and underwear, set the timer on the cell phone and took pictures from all angles. Full frontal, a profile, a back shot, a lying down shot, everything I could think of. Tonight I’m taking accurate measurements and recording them. 

It’s about time I’ve started taking this situation seriously. It’s hard to talk about because I do go out of my way to minimize just how bad it’s become. I’ve lived too long in a body that in no way represents who I am. I’m a control freak in all other aspects of my life but my weight. Maybe because I know it will be hard, maybe because I’m lazy or because lack enough will power. It’s been 4 years, maybe even 5, enough is enough. 

For the first time in a long time, I’m seeing this for what it really is. A problem. A fixable problem, but a problem none the less. 

So I’m back to what works. I’ve been loosely tracking for the past month, I’ve started tracking accurately today. Water. More clean food, less processed food. Movement. I know the drill, I’ve just been waiting for a miracle to happen, for all the weight to be gone without me putting in much effort. I’ve finally accepted that it’s not going to happen overnight, I thought I did in the past, but I guess it didn’t really click. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to take a while but if I do what I need to do, it will happen and I’ll be happier and I’ll be proud. So I started today, at 6:34 a.m. 

I have officially finished college. Friday was my last day and I spent the better part of it feeling torn between being happy and sad. I don’t deal with change well and although I spent the last 4 months stressed out and irritable, I was used to it, I loved it all (except for ALL the group work, maybe). I was used to getting up at 5:30, taking the 7:31 bus, then the 8:06 bus, then the 8:35 bus almost every day. I was used to packing my breakfasts, lunches and snacks. I was used to being busy and now I have all this free time until I find a job and it’s freaking me out.

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this on my blog but I had a rough couple year before I started school again. I was most likely severely depressed, I think I slept my days away for at least 6 months, it was horrible. I wasn’t doing anything with my life and I felt like a failure and I hated myself every damn day. I’m so scared to revert back to what I was, a lazy, unmotivated, hopeless mess. Because of this I have made a tentative list, every day for the next 7 days. Today? Clean the main level of my house and my room. I like to clean the main level because it makes my mom happy, I need to clean my room because it’s a mess and it’s making me anxious. I’m going to spend the evening making a list of advertising, marketing and PR agencies in Toronto (the program I graduated from and the fields I’ll be going into). Tomorrow I’m going to meet with a friend who I haven’t seen since December and make a reference list. The rest of the week is full of mundane but necessary things. I also want to start reading for leisure again, blogging more because I’ve really missed it and exercising. I need to do things, and my need to do things is freaking me out a bit, is this normal?

The future is scary but for the past year and a half, I worked really hard. I took the lead on every assignment, a role I wasn’t always comfortable with but learned to appreciate. I didn’t get enough sleep and I got perceived as a bitch because I was focused but for the first time in my life I’m proud of me. I’m going to graduate with at least a 3.8 GPA and I’m proud of me, it’s an odd feeling.

I’ve only expressed my fears of not getting hired anywhere, or not being successful in the real world with a couple of people, but I’m scared. I worry about everything, that’s just who I am. I did well in school, but will that translate and extend into getting a job? I don’t know. I have a tendency of worrying about things that I have no control over, that’s just me. So I guess I’ll keep worrying but in the mean time, I’m going to work on me. The personal and professional me.

I haven’t weighed myself in a long time; I need to get around to doing that. I’m going to have to take my income tax money and spend a good chunk of it on a professional wardrobe and I’ll be damned if it’s going to be full of size 22-24 clothes.

Working on me is tough. It’s much easier to take care of other people and other things and just look at my body as being a shell that I carry around with myself and busy myself with other things, anything else. But working on me is probably one of the most rewarding things I can do for myself at this point of my life.

While I mentioned being proud of myself is completely foreign, it’s a nice feeling. I want to keep feeling this proud of myself and I want to extend it to other aspects of my life.

I’ve had plans before and they’ve never come to fruition but bear with me guys, I’ve got another plan.

I really meant to blog on March 1st but I was busy doing nothing at all. 

Last week was my reading week and I house/cat sat. Meet Max…

I spent a lot of time doing the following

It was lovely. There were no kids, no loud chaos, just me and silence. I watched Frasier, watched movies, cleaned, took lots of baths. As much as I love my home, my mom and my siblings, I kind of enjoyed being on my own and that realization made my feel guilty. Everyone at homes jokes that I’ll never be able to leave. I used to think I would stay at home till I was married but I found myself asking the man if he’d be ready for a big move in two years, semi-serious. It’s scary thinking about the future but it’s a necessary evil. Time will tell when I fly the coop. With graduation approaching soon, I’m going to start applying for full time jobs soon and it’s kinda, sorta, maybe freaking me out. A lot. 

I spent the majority of yesterday evening making a food journal. 

I found making this food journal really cathartic and I’m not 100% sure why. Maybe because I feel like I’m taking control again. 

I had a rushed morning because I overslept so I grabbed my usual breakfast, an everything bagel toasted with margarine and a little cheddar cheese. I finally got to school and decided to log all the food I brought with my today. An everything bagel, a grilled chicken breast with 1 cup of green beans, an apple and some fruit snacks. In total, 14 points. 9 of those points were from breakfast. Way too much! I’m definitely going to have to find a new breakfast food.  I also set an alarm on my phone that will go off everyday at 8:00 p.m to ask if I have tracked all my food for the day. 

I’ve had a horrible track record with goal setting. I set them, and never achieve them. However, goals are extremely important so I’ve decided to make one. 

On May 30th of this year I will be turning 25 (I figure I’ll start lying about my age next year) and I would love to lose 25 pounds by then. I have 86 days, a little less than 3 months and I’m confident that I will be able to make this goal. 

I haven’t been blogging because I haven’t felt….successful. Why post on a weight loss/healthy living blog if you’re not losing weight or living healthily? 

Well, because it keeps you accountable. 

I had a mini breakdown a week ago in a change room. I needed some tops that could work for going out and for interviews. I grabbed a bunch, started trying them on and became really depressed. Everything was so expensive because it is plus sized, shirts that were supposed to be flowy clung to all the wrong places and after trying on 6 shirts, I gave up. I sat on the floor and sobbed as quietly as I could. All the same questions flooded back…how did I let it get this bad? Why am I not doing anything about it? Why am I wasting so much time being unhappy? 

Last week I decided that I wouldn’t count Points, but instead just track what I ate everyday and calculate an average day at the end of the week. My weight has steadily maintained over the past year and I was always a little confused about it.  

Turns out, I’m eating way too much. Too much food in general, too much of the wrong things. I forgot how to make Points stretch, like only buttering one side of an english muffin etc. I’ve also realized that my diet is too carb heavy, with not nearly enough protein. 

I changed my weigh in days to Sundays, I like the idea of starting fresh on a Monday. I’m pretty much where I thought I’d be and as upset as it makes me, I’ve got to own it for now, until I make the changes I need to. 

Last night I was dreading going out. I wasn’t feeling great, I was running late and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. It was my best friends birthday though, so I sucked it up, painted my lips red and decided to get the hell out of my stupid funk. 

I’m so sore today. I danced too much, drank way too much but I had a really good time, probably the best time in a long while. Also, because my grandparents asked me to house/cat sit, I got to play house with the man and it was lovely. Bless him for putting up with my messy self. 

So basically I’m back at it, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. 

Things have been busy. School’s busy. The horrible commute is hectic and my anxiety goes through the roof when my bus pulls up and 50 people surround you and push you to get on before you. I’m dealing with a specific person in almost all of my class, in almost all of my groups (there is a ton of group work in my program. A TON!) that I really dislike, he argues and undermines everything I say and sometimes I have to stop my voice from shaking because I get so mad at him. I’m worried about finding a real job and how I’m ever going to sit through a real interview when even the thought of it gives me butterflies in my stomach. I spend more time than I’d like to admit wondering if the man I’m with is the one, whether I’m the one for him. I hate the fact that I don’t see my best friend more than I do. My sister is getting bullied by her best friend of 7 years (pretty major when she’s only 10 years old) and I want to punch that kid in the face.

Yesterday on my way home I was SO looking forward to having 4 days off. I was playing around with the kobo app I downloaded on my phone, and I was listening to this hilarious podcast I just discovered, I was TGIF. My mom picked me up from the bus station and we made our way home. We were talking about our days, making dinner, listening to some music. My dad started complaining about heartburn and indigestion. He didn’t think anything of it, he’s been having pretty bad indigestion for a couple months, and went to lay down. He came back downstairs, was sure it was nothing, but thought he should make a quick trip (the hospital is 10 minutes away) to the ER just in case.

20 minutes later my mom called, teary, saying that she thinks he was having a heart attack but she wasn’t sure. She called back almost right away, told me he was in fact having a heart attack and for me to call her parents and his. 30 minutes later, my grandma was watching my siblings and my grandad was driving me to the hospital. My mom called again, she’s in the CCU, she’s freaked out, I should hurry. The hospital they were at is huge. Brand new and massive. I walk in, 7:30 on a Friday night, and no volunteers are there, no one at the information desk. I was that person, tears filling my eyes, walking frantically through the empty halls of a hospital.

Apparently he came in, they hooked him up to an ECG, he explained that he had pain shooting down his arms, and a lot of pressure in his chest and upper abdomen. 2 minutes later, 6:56 p.m, they were pushing him down on a stretcher, running him down the hall, my mom couldn’t follow him, he told her to tell us, his kids, that he loves us. My mom told me later that she’s never seen someone so scared. The cardiac lab closes at 7:00pm and if they don’t make it there in time, he’ll have to be taken my ambulance to a downtown hospital. 2 minutes later, an announcement comes over the speakers, code stemi, and my mom knows its my dad who is coding. Later, when I talked to him, he told me that he was sedated but awake when he felt himself slipping, his eyes rolled back in his head and he heard the nurse say he was coding. He described being shocked like two busses hitting his body from both directions.

When I finally found the CCU and his room, I walked in and saw in laying in that bed, completely flat, tubes and masks and monitors, and I lost it. I started to bawl. You usually think of your dad as the strength of the family and I couldn’t help but notice how weak he looked in his mint green hospital gown.

His one artery had 100% blockage, they put a stent in and he’s fine. I saw him today and despite being really tired and a bit sore, he’s fine. I’m still so shocked that my 49 year old father had a heart attack, it doesn’t feel real.  Here I was, 24 hours ago, complaining about a busy bus and opinionated idiots and now I have real things to worry about. It’s crazy how we take simple things for granted. I woke up this morning groggy and annoyed that my sister woke me up so early. Then I thought of waking up, just the simple act of waking up each morning, being a blessing. At 24 I really take my health for granted, I have for years.

6 months ago my dad also got diagnosed with diabetes. He’s since lost a lot of weight and has cut out a lot from his diet. It’s selfish of me, but it’s scary to think that those problems are now my problems. I now have a direct family history of diabetes and a heart attack.

Pretty sobering.