Adventures of an up and down life

Recently I received news that I was accepted to a doctoral program I applied to several months ago. I was excited and a little proud. I have been working really hard on so many things in my life, particularly a grueling often painful exercise program because I truly want to get leaner to help my pain and flexibility.

I have cut my calories by about a third from my baseline most days and have really paid attention to everything that passes my lips.

I race to work, usually driving way above the speed limit, because I can’t get up any earlier than 5 a.m. and still get at least seven hours sleep (I really value and believe in sleep as a health practice).

I run my ass off at work in ways that people neither know about nor probably value, trying to balance not only the medical but emotional needs of patients and their families.

I also–and this is very important to me–take the time to nurture relationships or at least acknowledge all of the people around me, by listening or joking or whatever way I can, even when I don’t have time, because I value making the time.

I am usually late rushing home from work because I am not going home but to physical therapy or some other appointment … unless I need to run home first to feed the dogs. Then I’m rushing to figure out dinner to eat it fast enough to have enough time to sleep.

I am supposed to be working on another book and responding to blog posts and marketing myself, but I am brain dead and usually want to space out to TV. Yet it’s already 8:30 or 9 and I have some chores to do before I can sleep and I have to do charts for work and figure out my patient list for the next day and I feel like I don’t know how people have children which I finally really want…

I race to go to sleep so I can wake up and do it all over. And usually it’s all fine.

But this calorie restriction, the increased exercise, the increased pain to get to the other side of pain … it’s that added straw that’s right before the one that breaks the camel’s back. Yet I had felt so encouraged, my clothes are looser and I can see my body changing.

I can feel the lightness of it, and it felt good.

So like an idiot I made the HUGE mistake of getting on the scale. It was, for me, like the emotional equivalent of a full-on body blow. I immediately started crying, sobbing really like someone had killed my dog. A complete melt down! Not a f#@king ounce lost.

Every insecurity and failure thought I have ever had cascaded down on me like an avalanche.

Even including weird thoughts from high school (probably because of this whole Facebook thing). The ones where it was made crystal clear to me that all those high school teenybopper books that tell you that even though you are an weird outcast, if you work hard you will be awesome and the beautiful popular people will be fat and stupid when they grow up … except it’s not true. Every f#@king girl who was a popular beauty queen from my high school is still disgustingly gorgeous and apparently can drink and party like teenagers and remain a size 4…

And other thoughts too. Like I’m supposed to be giving a lecture to a group of bariatric patients where the main theme is “You are not a number, stop focusing on weight.” Oh, the irony as I all but collapse at the colossal number staring at me on the silver digital dream killer.

“What a fraud,” is all I can think. Why on earth did I step on that f#@king scale? I never do it. I refuse at doctor’s appointments. I know exactly how I am going to react and yet I did it anyway.

Was the good news too much? Did I need to sabotage my mood? I thought about the physical form I have to submit for school. I’m not putting that weight in writing.

I thought about my weight when I came home from Grenada; how could I have been 13 pounds lighter then when I look thinner now? How could I have been 28 pounds lighter than my thinnest weight, which I have rarely been but consider my optimal weight?

How can it be that I have lost only 13 pounds in 6 weeks? And why do I feel like the biggest loser–and not like the TV version?

UGGGGGH, I am so pissed, and hurt and frustrated!

And this is why I we teach what we need to learn.