Good Morning!

It's a chilly morning here. When I got up, the temperature was 48 degrees, heading to a high of 61. Even Mark won't swim outdoors at that temperature. We are going to shul this morning where we will put four names in for the Refuah Shlayma list: Gordon, Lisa, Mark, and me. Even though my PET scan is clean (Thank God!), I still have my 33 days of radiation to do and my five years of Arimidex to take. I do not consider myself cured yet, but I'm certainly well on the way. I've been fighting the beast since last June. It's exhausting!

I took my first Arimidex pill last night at bedtime, starting my five years of this regiment. One of the most troubling side effects of Arimidex is weight gain. This has me quite concerned. My eating is completely out of control right now. I am unable to say no to anything in a restaurant, and I'm eating too many snacks at home. I was able to put the breaks on this behavior in April of 2009 out of extreme fear that I would die if I didn't because of the hernia surgery I was facing. Dr. Falcao put that fear in me, and it worked. Now I need to dig deep and find that fear again to keep me in control. The thought of five years of Arimidex with an immense weight gain might do it. I am 248 on my home scale this morning. That's disgusting. I was 242 on Tuesday, so in less than a week I have already put on another six pounds. That's more than a pound a day. That's just not normal, but then my weight problem is NOT normal. I even exercised at the weight machines, the stationary bike, and lots of walking on the track and in the Magic Kingdom. Despite that, I still gained six pounds. Unbelievable.

If any of you have ever been on a cruise, you KNOW that it is NOT a good time to start a diet. On our last big vacation, I gained 15 pounds in seven weeks, a bit over 2 pounds per week. I'm going away for three weeks this time and could very well return weighing 260 if I'm not careful. This is getting very scary to me. Not only will it make it hard to walk and move around again, but it will also make my back hurt terribly and could tear open the hernia. The mesh in there is not designed to hold up to a huge weight gain. I weighed 219 in September when it was repaired for the second time.

Another terrible thing about this weight gain is that I have almost no clothes that fit. When I lost over 100 pounds, I gave away all my "fat" clothes. I gave away everything in sizes 3x and 4x, sizes 26 and up. I kept only a few things in 2x, and the rest were 1x and sizes 20 to 22, a few 24s. Now most of those just don't fit. I weighed 40 pounds less when I bought them! What can I expect? Many years ago, as I started to go from 250 to 322, I just kept buying clothes in the next bigger size. Once I lost that weight, I had determined that I would NEVER need those big sizes again, so I gave them all away as we prepared for our move. I donated over 25 large garbage bags full of clothes! So....if I don't lose weight SOON, I'll be wearing the same three or four outfits over and over because I am just NOT buying bigger sizes again.

So this morning I got up with the resolve that for at least the next two days before I get on the cruise, I will do my very best to keep my eating to 1500 calories a day and to exercise at least some today and tomorrow. After shul today, Mark and I are going up to the Palms where I will do four weight machines for arms plus the stationary bike. I started the bike last Saturday and did 5 minutes. Monday I did 6 minutes, and Wednesday I did 7. Today's goal is 8, but if I could go 10, I'd be thrilled. I hope to walk at least 25 minutes also. We walked the indoor track earlier in the week, and I did a mile in 22 minutes. I should be able to do at least that today as well, either indoors or outdoors.

My first meal will be as soon as I finish this blog. Because of the C diff, I had been eating a lot of oatmeal and Activia yogurts. In fact, I ate two yogurts and two packs of instant oatmeal every morning. Sometimes I also ate a banana with that. Calorie count for all of that, including the banana, is about 660 calories. OUCH! Maybe it worked because I no longer have C diff (Thank God again!), but it started off my day with three times more calories than I used to eat when I was losing weight. My breakfast in those days was three sausage links and one yogurt, 200 calories. I read online somewhere once that if you keep your breakfast to 300 calories then it is a good start to having about 1500 calories a day when losing weight. So, this morning I am going to cut everything back by half for a start. I am about to go eat one pack of instant oatmeal (160 calories) and one Activia (80) calories, total of 240 calories. That still leaves me 60 calories, which will be a little of the left-over fruit salad (cantaloupe, blueberries, apples, oranges, and pears). I will probably end up at about 330 calories, and I think that will be a good start. All my meals today will be at home, so I should be able to control them well. Now if I can only keep from going to the fridge or pantry while I watch TV tonight. OY! That's a daily struggle!

PS It's now 3 p.m. We enjoyed the synagogue service because there was a young Rabbi-in-training here from NYC. He will be back in April, so we'll see him then. We came home and I ate an excellent lunch: big plate of green salad with 3 T of grated Parmesan, 1 T of Bacos, and 1 can of tuna in water, big bowl of the rest of the fruit salad. Lunch calories were 390. Dinner will be one griller burger on a low-cal bagel, spinach, and salad, 430 calories. This gives me a total for the day of 1150, so I can have 2 more yogurts and a banana tonight for a snack, ending the day with 1440 calories. I went to the gym and did my four arm machines, 8 minutes on the bike, and then walked 32 minutes outside with Mark (1.2 miles). It wasn't fast, but I was worn out. Still this is turning out to be a day when I feel in control. Maybe the fear of the Arimidex weight gain will work as well as the fear Dr. Falcao put in me nearly two years ago!