Dehydration, Getting My Glam on, and Other Exciting Adventures this Weekend

Five days into the month and I’m already slacking. I’m hopeless I know, but honestly I had a busy weekend AND I think I let myself get dehydrated. I’ve had several days of dizziness and episodes where my vision blacks out when I stand up too fast. My doctor has removed the diuretic from my blood pressure medication, but I won’t get that RX for a week or so. I made an executive decision to stop my BP meds yesterday. I just got so bad Saturday that by 5pm I thought I might have to make a trip to the hospital. It wasn’t near as bad as right after the surgery, but I just couldn’t seem to get myself rehydrated. I spent the whole day sipping on stuff and didn’t pee once. I think I finally started urinating again after consuming about 75 oz of liquid. I felt better by the time I went to bed, but yesterday I noticed that I was dragging again by noon and when it was time to cook dinner, I was having dizzy spells again…ugh!

It is my own stupid fault though. I’ve been very busy with work (as always, my 5 jobs keep me busy lol), but for the first time since surgery I finally have a surplus in my bank account…(of course Thunder has decided to completely fall apart on us, so I’m taking him to the vet tomorrow which I’m sure will eat up the rest of the surplus I was hoping to sock away for a new car). So anyway, I’ve been so busy that I often forget to drink. If I don’t get something to drink first thing in the morning with my coffee, I will put it off until the afternoon. I’ll be working and just think “I’m going to finish this one thing and then I’ll run and get something” and before I know it, it is lunch time and all I’ve had is a cup of coffee. You do that several days in a row while you are on a diuretic and you can quickly get into trouble and then play hell trying to re-hydrate yourself. I feel much better this morning so I am hoping that I’m finally catching up.

NOW to tell you about my exciting and busy weekend! Friday I was off and had to go to the doctor. Erik had to go to work and since we only have the one car, I decided I’d just walk. My primary care doctor is about a half mile away. I was a little nervous about it because I haven’t been walking much the last few weeks. I was having TOM issues again this month and, as ridiculous as it sounds, walking seems to make it worse. After 8 days of bleeding, you just aren’t in the mood to do anything that is going to make it worse. My doctor is putting me on provera every month to try and manage this problem, so we’ll see if that improves…but I digress lol.

SO, I decided I’d just walk to my doctor. Erik ended up dropping me off so I just had the walk home. It actually went pretty well, it was a beautiful morning for a walk, but I was worried about being too leisurely about it and overestimating my ability to walk an extended period of time so I tried to walk somewhat quickly. After a few minutes my lungs were on fire! I sat down on a bus bench at my street (which is about half way) and checked my phone. Erik had texted twice checking on me so I answered him telling him I was halfway home and catching my “breaf” on the bench. I finally figured that the lung problem was probably due to:

1. Being dehydrated and
2. Breathing through my mouth. Apparently, when you breath through your mouth, you dry out the air sacs in your lungs which cause the burning.

I sat there for a few minutes and then walked the rest of the way home. I was pretty tired by the time I got home, but after sitting down for a few minutes, I was back to normal. Before, I would literally have to take 5-10 minutes to recover from a mild walk like that. So, even though I am pitifully weak given the amount of weight I’ve lost already, I am making progress. I just need to be more consistent with my exercise regardless of my womanly troubles.

I’m I boring the crap out of you yet?

So, after my doctor’s visit, I went with my friend Shannon and signed up to be an AVON representative again. At the moment, I’m trying to save money for a new car (used, but something that will at least get us by for the next few years…our echo is on its last leg) and I really want to get bikes for both Tanner and I. I have sold AVON off and on over the years and really love their products and I got to thinking that I could start selling AVON and put that money towards our bikes. Sooooo, yes….if you don’t mind taking a look at my website and need something I’m selling, it would be great if you could purchase through my site. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be pressuring anyone to support me (I’m not a fan of bloggers who put their Amazon wishlists on their blogs…tacky), but I may put a little click through link on the side of my blog. I may also review a few products here and there, but only if they are applicable to my blog in some way. If I start to get obnoxious about it, let me know lol!

I forgot to mention that I got into another shirt I never thought would look good on me (mine is red...it's my signature color)! What was cool was that I got dressed, after doing my makeup and hair that morning and walked in to see what Erik thought and he actually did a double take and said “Wow!” I guess the shirt really showed off the weight loss so I was lovin’ that! I felt so pretty all day long so after our consultation with AVON, Shannon ran me over to the nail salon where I treated myself to a pedicure and manicure. BTW, the first thing the guy that does my nails said was “You look different!” He redeemed himself with those three words!

While I was getting beautified, I texted Erik about going out to dinner with Tanner. I know I just said we are trying to save for the car and bikes, etc, but I hadn’t really done anything for myself since the surgery (hence the mani/pedi) and we hadn’t gone out as a family in ….forever. I was feeling beautiful and I wanted to share that beauty with the rest of San Antonio! So, they picked me up and we went to Red Lobster. Don’t ask me how we ended up there of all places (because my carb addict husband and son love their biscuits perhaps?). I indulged a bit and had a drink which was nice, but probably full of carbs and empty calories. Oh well, I was rehydrating! Yeah, I need my liquid nutrition! I ordered this lobster, shrimp combo so that I could share with Tanner. I think I had a stuffed mushroom, a couple bites of salad, two small shrimp, two bites of lobster and one larger grilled shrimp. I was STUFFED! Seriously, that is a binge for me.

We had so much fun though! It was nice to be out in public and not feel like I was the largest person there. I mean, I probably still WAS the largest person there, but I’m slowly starting to approach your average fat person where before I was definitely circus-sized.

I guess I’ll stop here since this post is already two pages long. I’ll tell you about the excitement of Saturday in tomorrow’s post!

Put down the banana and step away from the scale and nobody's going to get hurt!

Since weighing myself this past Monday, I’ve been fighting the urge for daily weigh-ins. My weight has always been unpredictable, even when I’m trying to lose weight so I really want to know whether I’m still headed in the right direction. However, as we all know, your weight can fluctuate daily and even throughout the day. Chronic weighing usually just ends up making us crazy and contributing to our stress level which…you guessed it….makes us more likely to stress eat. In my case, chronic weighing also is closely connected to my bulimic days so it's not a healthy pastime for me.

Until today, I had successfully managed to avoid my scale. I think what prompted today’s weigh-in was something I feel was a “cheat” last night. It wasn’t really a cheat because even adding it up in my head, I know that I was still under my calories and fat for the day, but for some reason, psychologically it still feels like I cheated.

I have been super exhausted the last few days. I think it’s due to finally (TMI alert: skip to the next paragraph if you’d rather not know the ins and outs of my cycle) getting my period after several months. With Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) you can have very unpredictable periods. When you go for more than two months, you are supposed to contact a doctor for something to trigger a period; I think they use some kind of progesterone pill. Often, I notice that when I get back on my glucophage or lose a bit of weight it will trigger a period and that is what happened in this case. During my period, I generally tend to have at least one day where I am completely wiped out, so I don’t know if the several days of lethargy I’m currently experiencing are due to the fact that my body is making up for lost time or if I’m still trying to adjust to an earlier work schedule. I think it’s probably the former.

Yesterday when I got off work, I went right to bed. I knew I had about ½ an hour before T got home and I thought that maybe I could get a little nap in before he got home. I had to work a bit later that night and knew I’d never make it if I didn’t get a little refresher nap. I ended up falling right to sleep, T came home and had received a new game from gamefly so he was happy to entertain himself a bit while I grabbed another half hour or so of rest. By the time I woke up, it was getting late and to be honest, I just didn’t feel like cooking. We could have had sandwiches, but T was moaning about that so I just grabbed the keys and went to our local Popeyes. From my earlier research I knew exactly what I could get without going off plan. I knew I was going to have to get rid of the skin and I’ll tell ya…I knew it was going to be hard. I tried to talk T into getting rid of his, but he wasn’t having any of that. I did manage to trash the skin AND the biscuit and just had a chicken breast with mashed potatoes and a corn on the cob. So why do I feel like I cheated??

Anyway, that brings me back to the beginning of my story. As I grabbed my yogurt, banana and fiber bar for breakfast this morning, the scale was calling my name: “Come on Michelle, you know you probably gained a pound just looking at that crust, and you didn’t wear gloves when you disposed of the biscuit…who KNOWS what damage you did!” Crazy I know; It isn't even as if anything I ate last night would register on today's scale. I realize it made no sense, but I still put down my breakfast and stepped on the scale. I was down a pound from Monday. Not exactly the loss I had hoped to see, which is why, boys and girls, YOU DON’T GET ON THE SCALE MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK OK??? I was happy to see a loss period though. Guess we’ll see what happens by Monday.

Trying to remember my current mantra: “It isn’t about the scale, it’s about getting healthier. The rest will follow!” repeat as needed.


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