Coffee with a side of WHAT?

Ok, I am on a health journey, I am not shy about that. I want to be abe to experience things that I previously was too scared to try. Massage? Got one. Cryotherapy? Yup. Chiropractor? Been there. I am a big fan (no pun intended) of alternative medicine. I have always been a little nervous to try it, but I have always fascinated by it. So, as my weight gets lower and lower, I find myself reading and joining groups that advocate non-mainstream medications. So, that brings me to my latest blog…not sure if every one is ready for this, but I have always been honest so here goes…

COFFEE ENEMAS!

Yes, you read that right. Go back and reread it if you think you may have been mistaken. I will wait.

Ok, so I learned about “Up Yours Java”- a company that teaches and endorses the use of coffee and hydrogen peroxide water enemas. You do these every morning. You have to prepare both the water and the coffee. I mean, you can’t go through Starbucks and ask them for the “Bottom Line Frappucino”. Believe it or not, there is actually a coffee made special for enemas. I purchased all my equipment (a French Press, the Coffee, Mason Jars, an Enema gadget and food grade hydrogen peroxide). I was ready to start but I wasn’t starting. A bit nervous, I guess. Finally, my husband mentioned all the new products in the pantry and compared it to my buying a juicer when I was doing a Juice Fast, buting organic veggies when I was doing a Veggie cleanse, the monthly pills that were guaranteed to eliminate stubborn belly fat… Ok, I knew I had to star.t I could not let him win an argument.

So I prepared my Mason jars. Boiled the distilled water, added the drops, made the coffee and 2 hours later…there I sat with two full Mason jars. My kids would enter the kitchen and ask what I was working on…then they would quickly run back to their rooms yelling something that amounted to “Dear God Mom…” I took this as them thanking the Lord above that I had found a new passion in life.

So, you are supposed to do the enemas for 30 days. Every morning. Now, I am not a morning person. So, waking up an hour ahead of my normal time to insert a tube into my nether regions did not make me extremely happy. But I did it. Yes, I did it. The company is fantastic about using actual pictures to demonstrate the product and it’s use. However, these people on the web page are apparently into hard core yoga. They were smiling and twisting their bodies for “easy and simply insertion”. Ok, how hard could this be, I thought.

I made my safe place (put an old beach towel on the floor) and plopped myself down on the ground to begin. Obviously, the people in the p ictures do not have dogs. As soon as I plopped, both dogs came running over and began jumping around and barking. They were obviously a lot more excited about this than I was. So, that was a no go. Locked the dogs out of the room and started again.

I wish I could explain the sounds that came from me as I tried to twist my body as they did in the pictures. It is not easy. Have you every given yourself an enema? I mean a legit enema…a tubing attached to a bucket of liquid? Well, lets just say I am glad I locked my door. I was making so much noise and grunting so loudly my husband began trying to enter the door and yelling. “Joanna! Should I call 911?” “What the heck is going on?” “EIther answer me ro I am breaking the door down!” I managed to tell him I was fine in between grunts. He wasn’t convinced and he and the dogs decided to wait outside the door barking (him) and whining (the dogs).

So, I will not go into details…unless you want details. But let’s just say it all worked out in the END! I have completed 6 days doing this, no, let’s say I have survived 6 days doing this. Will I continue? I do not know. But I will gladly keep you informed of what is happening in my lower intestine.

What about you? Have you tried anything new that you normally would have never tried? Let me know!! We gain a bit of confidence and courage as we regain our self confidence. It can be fun and it can also be…weird.

I’ll Take Easter Candy for $100, Alex!

Hi, my name is Joanna and I am an overeater! I eat my feelings, I eat my pain, hell, I even eat my happiness! My motto for so long was “Everything is better with a bean burrito”. I would wake up in the morning and wonder what I should have for breakfast, unch and dinner. Sometimes I would plan on eating all of them at the same time! It’s not easy to sort through extra psychological baggage to figure out why you overeat. I want to stop yo-yoing with my food and understand WHY I overeat. For instance…

There I was, minding my own business, walking through the local grocery store to pick up items for dinner (a good dinner too…not mashed potaoes with gravy and mac and cheese with a side of buttered bread) when I walked into aisle 3 and BAM (yes, just like Batman and Robin) there was the Easter candy right in front of me. I’m not talking one or two packs of jelly beans. I am talking about chocolate covered peeps, Easter snicker eggs, Hershey chocolate mini eggs, Reeses peanut butter bunnies and Hot Tamale peeps. YES HOT TAMALE PEEPS!

I spent the next two hours looking at every package, reading the back and trying to find a keto Easter peanut butter egg or a low carb peep…I would even settle for a Starburst jellybean…JUST ONE!

Alas, Easter candy is not conducive to healthy eating. Oh I know what people will say “Just eat one, everything in moderation”. Well, that is the problem Apparently I stayed home the say moderate eating was taught in 8th Grade Health. I can’t eat things like that in moderation, unless moderation means one in your mouth while 2 more candies sit on standbye in each chocolate stained fist.

I cannot eat in moderation so I refrain from eating it at all. That may seem ridiculous to you, but it is what I have to do. I once thought I had control of myself. I once thought I could eat one piece of chocolate, I could eat one pancake…fast forward 6 months and I had gained 60 pounds. So, yea, I can’t do that.It’s like being on Jeopardy and the catagory is “FOODS THAT MAKE YOU GAIN WEIGHT” but your damn buzzer doesn’t work! It is frustrating!

So, on Easter, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving and even on St. Patrick’s Day…I try to not make the holiday centered around food. It sounds easy, but when you raised that good food makes good times, it is hard to do. So I plan events, I plan games, I buy candy for the kid’s baskets/stockings BUT I only buy enough for them. No extras. Not happening. Not in this house.

Do you feel traumatized by the holidays? Reach out to me! Let’s battle this together. No successful dieter ever did it alone, I guarantee.

Riding the Roller Coaster

OH MY GOD! My last entry was in August! What have I been doing, you ask? How have I been entertaining myself? Well…since I have not been updating my blog…I will give you three guesses how my weight loss journey is going:

A) Horrible

B) Crappy

C) Dear Lord, do not ask that question when I am standing this close to that

Kit Kat bar!

Ok, so I lost control during Covid Quarantine and have had a really hard time getting back into the healthy groove.

I went through the guilt: “How could you do this?” “Why would you do this to yourself?” “You are a failure!” This are the thoughts that consumed me. I fell off the keto wagon and I fell hard, right into a huge pile of bread and pasta.

No one is harder on me than I am on myself. Trust me!!

And I am getting the “looks”. You know, you go out and you can see someone you know looking you up and down with a look on their face. Is it disappointment? Is it happiness? I have learned the hard way, some people actually get happiness out of others failings. And I need to stop using the word failure. I looked up the definition of failure and it is “lack of success”. I don’t have that. I have been very successful with my weight loss journey. I have learned which foods are triggers for me, I have learned which people to keep in my close support circle, I have learned that food is a crutch for me and always has been. That is not a lack of success.

Did I have a temporary set back? Yes I did. Am I giving up and regaining all my weight until I hit that 480 mark again? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I am feeling the same excitement I originally felt when I started my journey. We will all ride the rollercoaster throughout our life. Maybe it’s relationships, maybe it’s food, maybe it’s family. We will all have ups and downs. Sometimes we will feel like we cannot recover from the lows. But we can. We can face our obstacles and we can eliminate them, one by one.

The power to bounce back from a low is not found online, it is not found on Etsy or Ebay. It is found (as corny as this sounds) within ourselves. We have to dig down and find our strength and use it to climb our way back to the top.

It’s not going to always be rainbows and unicorns. But how fun would a roller coaster be if it only went down? The lows are there so we can appreciate our highs and love ourselves for working to get there.

We can do this. We can do this together. If you are struggling – reach out to someone, hell reach out to me! WE CAN DO THIS!!

The Covid Hard 30!

Ok – I do not even know where to begin. Quarantine has been very difficult on me. When the Y closed, my mind closed. I tried to motivate myself to exercise at home, I tried to exercise in my room, I tried to go walking…but I couldn’t keep the mojo flowing.

I found myself just giving in to the blahs. I would tell myself “today you will jump out of bed and take a 3 mile walk” but my mind would quickly shift to “it’s really a bad time, covid-19 is rampant, no one else has to get up this morning…”. I talked myself into not exercising for one day…for one week…and then for a month…and then…

Yup, I stopped. I couldn’t stop my way of eating (I think it will forever be burned into my brain) but I stopped the movement.

My body has not responded well to being stationary and, you know the story, this led to depression which led to feeling like giving up. You been there? What am I saying, we have ALL been there. One afternoon, I just laid on my bed and broke down in tears and I mean sobbing. I was actually feeling sorry for myself. I was blaming COVID for my depression. Let me repeat that, I WAS FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF.

I pulled my old journals out and looked at my starting weight – 482. I looked at old picture and saw my face-a sad and unhappy face. I knew I could not go back to that starting line. I got angry at myself for giving in to my depression and I was harsh to myself. I began to doubt my abilities and doubt my success.

I called one of my sisters, as I usually do. I cried. I sobbed until I felt like I was going to throw up. Then we talked. She told me I needed to forgive myself before I went any further. I thought about that. By being angry, I was generating negativity towards myself. I have worked to hard to love myself and to get to where I am to despise the image in the mirror. We fall, we fail, sometimes we want to give up. But we can’t.

If you are facing these feelings, I get it. I do. But nothing is forever. Quarantines end. Covid clears. Where do we want to be standing when we get the green light? On our bed soaked in fear and apprehension? Or standing strong ready to grab hold and hold on tight?

Me? I am grabbing on and holding on with all my might.

So I started reading all the weight loss blogs and instagrams that I follow and I discovered something called the “Hard 75”. For 75 days you MAKE yourself keep to a regime hoping it will become a habit. The Hard 75 was a bit too intense for me so I created my own…the Hard 30! For 30 days, I am exercising at least 30 minutes a day, drinking a gallon of water, NO CHEAT DAYS, reading at least 10 pages of a self-help book and taking a picture every day.

It has only been one week…but guess what? I am starting to get that feeling again. I am feeling that pride creeping in and pushing out the anger. It is starting. If you are feeling this way? Let’s do it together! We can hard 30 support each other!!

WE ARE WORTH THIS!