My question this week is: what do you do when your diet gets derailed from stress?
Technically my little Weigh-In book says that I've lost a toal of 8.8 pounds, and that is 2.6 pounds less of me since last week.
But I didn't, not really.
The only reason the scale went down was that I wasn't wearing my usual heavy, winter jeans this time. I feel like I didn't deserve a good scale week. I didn't earn it.
I'm learning that I'm not just an emotional eater, I'm also an emotional dieter.
I had planned to work out. I had planned to get my new treadmill and start my journey back to fitness. I had planned out my meals and splurges for the week: my sweetie's birthday and his beloved Pot Roast dinner and German Chocolate Cake was already on the calendar. An invitation to go out to lunch with my Mom, Aunt and Cousin was another blip, but I'd sat down with the restaurant menu and figured it out before leaving the house. I was ready.
And then, Life Happened.
My treadmill never showed up. My stress level shot to "11" with family issues. And while I didn't necessarily go over my points target for the week, I ate BAD points far too often. Dinner consisting of a bottle of chardonnay and a bowl of air-popped popcorn is NOT what they want you to aim for on Weight Watchers. (Lots of fiber, though!) Doing it once is a bad night. Doing it twice in a week? That's a bad week.
I felt so ... SNAFU this week. My job hunt hasn't turned up anything. My writing project has stagnated in the shadow of more evaluation results and issues with my daughter. Our finances are precarious, and I fear the PECO bill that's coming soon.
My parenting is definitely NOT going well, and that's probably the worst part of it all.
I know there are a lot of other parents of kids with special needs out there, and you know how it goes: there are good times, and there are bad times. When you're in the bad times you keep yourself going by holding on to the idea that it will get better, but when you get into a good season, you dread the Wheel of Life turning once again, as it inevitably must. We had a great year last year. (The first "good year" since she was two. She's 11 now.) The wheel has turned, once again, and just when we are dealing with oncoming puberty, we needed to change prescribing doctors, and the oppositional defiant disorder part of my daughter's syndrome has started to rear it's fugly head once again.
This week was a bad ODD week. It was also the third meeting with our new prescribing doctor, and I had hopes that, now that she's had 2 months to review the phonebook of documentation and meet with my daughter several times, we could finally move forward and address the situation which has been snowballing since last summer. The ODD medication has not had the dosage adjusted in 4 years, and my daughter has grown almost 2 feet since then and has put on about 40 pounds. Not to tell the good Doctor her job, but we. need. to. tweak. things. Most kids do not stay up an average of 2 hours past their bedtime, and do not then wake up each morning screeching at the rest of their families, screaming and having emotional breakdowns over being told what is available for breakfast doesn't include pancakes on a schoolday, and locking themselves in their bathroom to sleep on the floor when they are supposed to be brushing their teeth on a school morning. We. Need. To. Tweak. Things. Now.
The doctor's advice? Try soothing spa baths and relaxation tapes and a later bedtime.
That was one of the nights I had a bottle of wine for dinner, if you hadn't guessed.
This Friday morning, after a week of my daughter making our lives hell every single day, we finally had what was Armageddon at our house. It started promptly upon her being woken up, involved screaming, snarling, tears, time-outs, and finally, a full-week grounding (no electronics, no TV, no outings, no kidding) after literally dozens of warnings, talks, peaceful resolution and behavioral plans didn't work. It was full-melodrama mode and I got to hear what a mean mom I am and how much she hates me, all before I had a cup of coffee. Good times!
I had to drive her to school in my PJ's. I was, actually, wearing a hoodie and thin cotton pajama bottoms. Once upon a time you might have been able to call them "summer sweatpants" but they've been washed to the point of almost not having molecular structure anymore. My stress level was so high I could feel my pulse in my skull, even after I dropped her off. I have no health insurance. Lost it just before a stress test was scheduled with a cardiologist... needless to say, the buildup of the week not only had me stressed, but scared at what I was feeling physically. Heart palpitations in a 44-year old, overweight female, who smoked in my teens and 20's, and was on the Pill through my 20's half of my 30's? Yeah. There's a reason I'm dieting these days.
So I tried to destress after she got out of the car. Pulled out my book, escaped my suburban mommy life into David Webber's Honorverse while I waited for my Weight Watchers franchise to open.
Then I got out of the car, and realized what I was wearing. In public. With no makeup and my hair looking like a streetwalker after a busy night. (But there was NO effing way I was going home, missing my weigh-in, and having to not eat for the rest of the day until the evening meeting.) I lost another 2.6 pounds, supposedly, but I can't even enjoy it because that could ALL be the difference between the PJ's and my heavy jeans... and that means next week, when I go back, hopefully not looking like a mental patient, the scale is going to add all that back on.
My story isn't unique. Everybody has stress. Some far, far worse than me. My old boss used to tell me that the way to handle being overloaded is to "stop puttin out forest fires and go after the arsonist!" Well, my little "arsonist" is a special needs child, and I am her primary caregiver, so there's limits and no easy answers or quick fixes about that. What do you do when you're trying to diet, and the gods just seem to like throwing mellons at your head?