Sunday Weigh-In July 7, 2019

[Barb135]

Good morning... I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July.  It was quiet here and we both worked on shop projects.    We've enjoyed watching the neighbor's fireworks for the 26 yrs we've lived here, but the surrounding trees have grown so much, it's getting harder to see them.  In addition, it was raining in the evening, so we ended up getting our fireworks fix from the local TV station this year, although we did go outside and catch a few glimpses of those sent up by neighbors.  There's just something about seeing them "for real" vs seeing them on TV against a background of lights, although they did show a few of them against the dark sky, so you could actually see the fireworks and not the city lights.

Anyway, all in all, it was a good day, considering everything that's gone wrong this year and continues to go wrong - if you can look at it that way... You might recall that MIL, recently, passed away and almost simultaneously, one of my brother was in the hospital with what was thought to be pneumonia, ultimately diagnosed as COPD; at the same time that was happening, my SIL was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy and one of my sisters had a cyst removed from her kidney that turned out to be cancer (same sister has already had bladder removed due to cancer and has Stage IV lung cancer)...Another sister was determined  to have  a heart problem at the same time all this was going on.

As if all that wasn't enough, I got a text yesterday from one of my other sisters, saying that an uncle had passed away yesterday morning.  This was my favorite uncle (brother of my aunt that I cared for, for so long) and although he'd been in the hospital, no one had called to tell me that.  But wait, that's not all - I was talking to my sister to get particulars about my uncle and as we were talking about funeral arrangements and whether I would/wouldn't be able to go, I mentioned a couple of things I had to do this coming week, one of them being my annual mammogram.  That "reminded" her of something, so I got the "oh by the way" and she went on to tell me that our oldest sister (same sister recently determined to have heart problem) had her mammogram last week.  They found a lump in her breast that they're relatively sure is malignant, although they have to do the biopsy to be certain.

I have 3 sisters and they, as well as myself, have fibrocystic breasts, so getting a mammogram is very important.  It's always bothered me that my reports come back with that little side note saying that because of the density, lumps could be missed.  Ironically, I had an appointment for my mammogram last week and when I got there, the girl checking me in, mentioned that I'd never had the 3-D mammogram and because of fibrocystic breasts, she wondered if I thought I should have that.  I said sure, if I could do it without going through the hassle of getting another doctor's order, etc.  She said I could, so  I ended up rescheduling in order to get the 3-D instead; that's tomorrow...  

Of all the types of cancer in my family, breast cancer had not been one of them... now it looks like it is.

Anyway, as you can see, what started out to be a great weekend hasn't ended up that way.  Weight-wise, I'm not doing so great, either... somehow, I was holding steady at the beginning of the week, but somehow for the past few days, I've managed to pick up an average of a pound/day... That gives me a 4 lb gain over last week even while cutting back on bread and other carbs that  tend to increase inflammation in my body, as well as cause weight gain.

I know I'm having some fluid retention, but I don't think it's enough for that kind of weight gain.  Between the excessive heat and daily thunderstorms, I know I haven't been exercising enough, but neither should that cause such a jump.  The only things I can really think of would be too little thyroid hormones and/or high cortisol levels from stress.  Although I do take my replacement thyroid hormone medication every day, I've been really lax about taking the supplements that help make it work better, so I do need to get that all sorted out and get back on schedule again with all of that, plus I've run out of a couple of them, so I need to replenish my supplies.

I make airline reservations yesterday to go up north to spend time with my family at the end of the month, so I'd like to get rid of, at least, this extra 4 pounds, plus the 2 I gained while we were in Iowa in June when my MIL passed away, so I can get back where I was a few weeks ago.  I feel fat, sloppy and discouraged, which is not my usual optimistic self...  :-)

So - all of that said, it's time to get back on track... I have a treadmill and although I dislike using it, I'll need to swallow my dislike during this hot, rainy time.  I also have exercise videos I can use and there's nothing but my own  mental block that's stopping me from using them - yes, there's a story behind that... lol

Anyway, that's where I am - how about you?  I hope you're doing well and have achieved whatever goals you set for yourself this week.  

~~Wishing everyone a wonderful, successful week~~

[AnnieBrooke]

Hm. I was going to write that we're at the farm, so I didn't bother to try to weigh on the lousy scale here and ate a full breakfast. But after reading your story, Barb, I thought "At LEAST I could weigh myself here, for heaven's sake; no more excuses." So I'll just start with the better of the two scales here at the farm, it's in the guest bathroom. It isn't digital but does have those little arrows you can move to mark where you are. That will make it lots easier to figure out the plus-1-pound or minus-2-pounds week by week. And later I can weigh myself on it, and rush to the little house and weigh myself on the digital scale, and do the math to compute how different they are from each other, and see how much I gained or lost this last week for real. I think I must have lost, since July 4 I cooked for 25 but was so stressed over trying to get everyone fed in a timely way that I never ate, and on July 5 I wasn't feeling well. But probably not too terrifically much, a pound at most.

We did have a good July 4 party, my stress notwithstanding. We used to have these every 4th of July at the farm, but once our kiddo got to be about 6, it was too much to prepare, since we weren't living at the farm until school was over. (I think we held it once since then.) Family would come and spend the night in tents, and my husband would invite business friends, and it was pretty fun. Anyway, though we still don't live at the farm full-time from September to June, my husband got the idea that we would have the party again, and began in May going over there and spending a lot of time prepping the farmhouse and especially the yard. The place still needed work when I began pitching in last week, there were cobwebs all over the walls and dead plants in the planter boxes and stuff like that, but we did manage to fix the things that were broken and tidy the things that looked lame, and we had the party pretty much like all other times, even with mostly the same crowd. (I was actually pleased at that -- everyone we asked said yes, when I had begun to wonder if everyone found it a little boring.) $600 worth of food, 25 people, four barbecues going and tons of side dishes. Our new puppy gamboled around and was cute, and finally conked out in her dog bed in the center of the crowd. One kind of poignant touch -- two of the people who used to be afoot, were there in wheelchairs this year. One is my husband's aged aunt, and that might be somewhat expected, but the other is only 26, and he used to run around at the farm as a kid and climb in the barn and get into the fireworks.

I must run -- we're expected at a reunion today. Will post back when I figure out how I did weight-wise. Have a great week!

[Barb135]

It sounds like you might need to break down and buy  a digital scale for the farmhouse then you'll have an accurate scale wherever you are... :-)

Honestly, I actually started not to even weigh myself this morning because I could feel that my weight was going to be up because I felt terribly bloated and swollen; I was going to use the excuse that I was retaining too much fluid and I know it wouldn't be an accurate weight, but then I decided that it wouldn't be a "weigh in" if I didn't actually weigh myself so I just decided to 'fess up... lol

Now, will it be a huge surprise if I tell you I'm up almost another pound since this morning??  It can't be what I've eaten, as that's been a piece of chicken I brought home from lunch out yesterday and some freshly sliced sliced tomato.  I'm currently in the process of eating some fresh watermelon.  Yes, I know the watermelon has sugar in it, but that hasn't even had time to digest yet... lol

Anyway, it sounds like your 4th of July party turned out really well and to think you got the same crowd you used to get - how much better can it get?  I used to lose weight when I was stressed, also, because I didn't eat, but now I do the opposite (not eat, but gain weight).

I hope your reunion goes well and I've no doubt you did much better than I did, weight-wise...  :-)