Mental Challenges

This last week or so has been a real mental challenge for me. I'm in a bit of a rut as far as weight loss goes - and there's probably three or four real reasons for that.

 First, of course, was surgery a week ago - really, it was only a week ago and I have to remind myself of that. Despite that hopefully being the last round of ass surgery, it will take some time for the incision she made to heal - so it's not unexpected that exercise will continue to aggravate it. Add the New Year's Knee Incident in, and exercise has been extra complicated.

Next, it's been fucking cold here this week, as in barely above freezing at all cold. Some of you in more northern climates might laugh at that, but for North Carolina, it's cold. Add that to carrying around 160+ pounds less than I used to, and it's cold! I've never worn layers in my life - I went to my WLS support group meeting on Thursday night wearing a long sleeved tee, a hand knit sweater, my suede jacket, a hand-knit cowl and hand-knit gloves. And I was still cold! Add to that, the cold tends to make me want hearty, warm, comfort food - which tends to be calorie dense.

I've been struggling a bit with brain cravings, or what I sometimes call "the nibbles". I think some of it at times is boredom, other times it may be putting off breakfast a little too long, and then the "need fuel!" signal doesn't seem to get turned off as it should. I love nuts and things like pumpkins seeds or sunflower seeds, but again - calorie dense, so I need to find alternatives that will give me the satisfaction of a snack without making my daily totals go crazy.

And finally, I've been in a bit of an emotional funk. After the news that the ass surgeries should be over, I can now make the appointment with our reproductive endocrinologist to see what testing he needs to do, if there's any hope of doing IVF on our own, or if we'll need to go to donor eggs. If we need to go the donor route, the expense goes up astronomically, as any donor costs are not covered by insurance. We'll have to weigh chances of success against the cost, a decision that will undoubtedly painful. On top of that, a dear friend's 20-year old daughter just had a beautiful baby boy. Unfortunately her life is a bit of a shambles right now, and the baby daddy is...well...not exactly a parental dream. I hope mother and child succeed, but there's quite a few roadblocks in their way, and it honestly breaks my heart for all involved.

So with all those things in mind, I'm trying to work through whether or not I've actually hit a real "stall" point in my loss. Mentally, I know I just want the loss segment to be over-  I'm so close, roughly 25 pounds to my stated goal, and maybe 15 more with plastic surgery and a smidge more loss, but 25 for now. That's really nothing, in the grand scheme of things, since I'm down 164, but it feels like a mountain right now.

I know I need to buckle down, get as much exercise I can with the limitations I have, make sure I'm maintaining 850-900 calories, and things will happen.

But....ugh.