And another one bites the dust...

So, another month is gone and once again I'm full of good excuses! Shortly after my last post, 6 days in fact, I had emergency surgery. Something about an appendix and inflammation. =) Yes, I had an appendectomy. So that's one thing I can check off my to-do-in-life list! While they were in that tummy of mine they discovered I had a belly-button hernia from pregnancy and fixed that too! So, as you can imagine I was down and out for a couple of weeks...then came Thanksgiving...then my company's layoffs (which I thankfully survived). So, now here I am looking Christmas in the eyes.

What do you do when the the season of sweets and pastries and appetizers is upon you? Well, if you're me, you have a heart to heart with a close friend who happens to be a dietician. What happened? Well....I used to think I was fed up with my weight, but the past week has been enlightening for me. It's shown me how bad things have gotten. I'm officially uncomfortable in my own skin. I'm disgusted by a photograph of myself. I don't want to go on like this. I'm exhausted. And I mean exhausted all of the time. But who wouldn't be tired carrying around a good 70 extra pounds all the time?

Oh, I was telling you about my friend. Sarah, that's her name. She and I work together, but her training is in nutrition and she's a licensed dietician. She's struggled with eating issues in her life and she is passionate about helping people be healthy. She doesn't care what someone weighs, but she thinks health is key. I like that. Plus, I like her. She's my friend so that helps. =)

I've wanted to talk to Sarah for a while about my eating and the fact that food is my best friend, but I was scared. I've tried a lot of "diets", "routines", "plans", etc. Every time I've tried, I've failed. It's heartbreaking when you really start to think about it. But something (Are you there God? It's me, Terri!) made me talk to her today about how sick and tired I am of being sick and tired of being fat. And you know what? She wants to help me. It's the first time I've had a friend say "I want to help you." It's an amazing thing when you hear that. I wanted to cry.

Sarah and I talked for about an hour about goals. We talked about baby steps. She understands my fear of leaving food, my fear of failure, my fear of facing all the things I hide behind fat and french fries. She gets it. She also knows I'm going to fail a multitude of times before I succeed. There's freedom in that, you know. Each failure gets me one step closer to success, so those failures aren't all for naught.

So, we set 2 goals for me this week. The first is to start to drink more water. As it turns out, dehydration can rear it's head disquised as hunger! Who knew? Well, Sarah did. =) Also, water helps you feel fuller, so it all makes sense. So, I'm replacing at least 1/2 of my usual Diet Dr. Pepper with water and I'll slowly (not all this week) increase that water consumption until I'm drinking 1/2 my body weight in ounces of water! Seems like a lot right now, but I'm sure it won't be so much once I start. The second goal is to write down anything that goes in my mouth - food, beverage, hard candy, the works. And after I write it down I'm also going to write down what I was feeling when I ate it. That's sort of scary, but she says it will help. She's my friend. I'm just going to trust her on this one.

Oh yeah - we did talk a bit about exercise too. She suggested I get myself moving in some way at least 2-3 times per week. I still can't do anything with impact, so I've got some Winsor Pilates DVDs that I'm going to bust out. I did one about an hour ago and I survived, so we'll see if I can do it a few times a week.

Feel free to check in with and see how things are going....I'll do my best to update at least once per week as to how the new "make Terri healthy plan" is going. As always, wish me luck...and pray because I know I can't do it all alone!