All the Health Wins

I’m late today. I was struggling to make time to post. It’s almost bedtime but I’m getting it in first! We had a family day inside today because the rain/storms made us have to switch up our weekend days at the last minute. So, Sunday will be our Saturday; swimming, biking and a picnic.

I slept way too early last night. I woke up at 2am this morning and just couldn’t get back to sleep. Luckily, my friend in Asia was awake and I spent some time with her, went to put gas in the car, and folded some laundry. At 6am, I was falling asleep watching weird fish videos on YouTube so I laid back down. I didn’t wake up until 9:30 and it took me until 10 to force myself out of bed because I kept dozing off again. That nap made my whole day so much harder than it had to be. I used to enjoy naps but since starting a routine with exercise, I feel sluggish and get a headache after napping. Probably because I’m used to drinking water all day now and I stop while napping. I never did get caught up on the fluid I missed during those three and a half hours. I’m going to just have to make myself hold out for 9:00 for sleep so that I don’t wake up too early. The longer I’m alone in a quiet house, before the family wakes up, the sleepier I will get.

I had to pick up the higher strength dosage of my nerve pain medication today and I wanted to share with you all how much these 6 weeks have changed the state of my health. In six short weeks, I have:

1) cut my blood pressure medicine dose in half

2) discontinued my mealtime insulin

3) gone to half of the long-acting insulin dosage I was on

4) completely gotten off of lithium, as I no longer need the extra depression aid

5) seen the return of my periods after a 10 month absence

6) only taken a single klonopin in this time, where I used to take it several days a week for anxiety

7) lowered my a1c from 8.4 to 6.5

Those are huge improvements, just to my medications! My NSVs are innumerable. Today, I added to my accomplishments being down two shirt sizes in 6 weeks. I went from a 5x to a 3x. I mean, I can buy most tshirts now! As a lover of Disney apparel, this is so exciting to me. Not that I’m going to buy any since I’ll probably be down another size in no time, but the fact that I COULD is huge!

E2M is the best decision I think I have ever made for myself in my life. I had been on the fence about having bariatric surgery for almost a year because my family had me feeling it was my only hope. I have proven them wrong. I can do this without having to go to the extreme. I am capable of doing this without surgery, I just had to find my strength. And I found it here.

My husband has been taking pictures for me every week to help me see all the changes my body is going through. Yesterday’s pictures left me absolutely speechless. If anyone had ever said I could accomplish this much in 6 weeks, I would have laughed them right off their feet. The only way I can really document that is braless so I have drawn a bra on so I can share with you how unbelievably well this process is working!

Never give up. Mistakes are part of getting it right. Compromises sometimes have to happen. Every time you try, you are one step closer to success. There’s no such thing as one step forward and two steps back because every single step forward makes you more capable of the next step forward, no matter how many times you stumble. Always stand tall and try again, and again, and again. The only thing holding you back from being better every day, somehow or some way, is yourself.