![]() I have been extremely discouraged lately. I have been trying to stay on the straight and narrow but just seem to be getting curve ball after curve ball. I can't seem to get with the program. I keep trying to get ahead but every time it seems like I take 2 steps back. All I want is progress but I have been discouraging myself so much that it is blocking change. I seem to be no longer motivated by what used to keep me going. I somehow justify my actions by making myself believe I deserve them. I am just stuck in a rut! So as I sit here, I try to figure out what is missing...and well, here I am writing about it. For me writing things down (or typing) is a great way for me to move on. There is just something about getting it all out in the open in order to get over whatever slump I’m in. If you stumble upon this...yes I am back to blogging about my journey; even though I said in my last posting it was the end. I need this. I am finally ready to do this all over again. Here is to the first day of the rest of my life. I will start to catch you up on the past 404 days… This morning I woke up and had my lemon water in 1 cup of warm water and made myself a blueberry smoothie for breakfast. I use 1 cup frozen blueberries, 7 tablespoons of Yoplait Original Vanilla yogurt, a shot of water and 1 banana. I had a mid-morning snack of a Nature Valley granola bar and am currently waiting for my green tea to finish steeping. For lunch I am going to have half a cantaloupe with cottage cheese and for dinner I will have a scrambled egg with wheat toast – NO BUTTER – I also am starting with my exercise routine. 30 minutes on my recumbent bike for starters. I have printed out a calorie intake sheet where I write it all down so I can stay accountable for everything. I found it online; here is the link if anyone is interested: http://www.webmd.com/diet/printable/food-fitness-journal I have become extremely frustrated on finding pants. I have come back to the place where I once said I would never visit again. Here I am on the hunt to find clothes to cover up my body. I have gained a lot of my weight back in my legs so it has been extremely hard to find a pair that doesn’t glorify every bump and ripple. This has been my turning point. Today is the day I have decided enough is enough. For the last week I have purged my kitchen of any temptations, geared myself up emotionally and laid out a plan. Step one was a much needed and overdue weigh in. I weighed myself for the first time in almost a year and am only 19 pounds shy of what I used to be at my largest. How did this happen? How could I have let myself get so out of control? Today, January 18th, 2016, I weighed in at 319 pounds. My heaviest weight was 338 pounds. In a little over a year since I had lost 100 pounds I have managed to gain 81 pounds of it back. I stopped calorie counting, watching what I ate and quit working out. I quit caring. I stopped doing everything that I had worked so hard to accomplish. My fast food habits picked up again and slowly day by day I lost myself. No more lies, no more shame. With the push and encouragement from my Mom I have decided to blog about my struggles again, for writing about it seems to help tremendously as well as the support from my readers. Things really took a turn for the worst when we lost our beloved Nibbler this past November. She was our black lab and for anyone that knows us, knows that our dogs are our babies…our world. We had just celebrated her 5th Birthday a couple weeks before her passing. We started noticing signs that something might be wrong when we would come home from work and she was not jumping up on the door waiting for us to come in to the house. A few days went by where she wasn’t greeting us at the door. We thought she may just not be feeling well and gave her space to get better. Never did we suspect the severity of it because she’d go through spurts where she’d be back at her normal self; jumping on you with excitement. A few days after that she wouldn’t come downstairs to go potty before I left for work in the morning. This was highly unusual. Worried, I called my Mom from work to go check on her to see if she was still upstairs sleeping and to see if she could take her to the vet for me since both Michael and I were at work. My Mom took her in and she was treated for a gastrointestinal infection. It was odd because she wasn’t puking uncontrollably or having issues going to the bathroom until that day she had a runny bowel movement. After a few days of her being on her medication we realized she was not getting any better. She had stopped going potty and I was convinced she had a blockage because a few weeks back she had thrown up a little grass that she had eaten and it looked as if there were a few pebbles in it. I thought she must have eaten a rock & that is why she has been acting lethargic. In a panic I took her to the vet again but this time for x-rays. My worst case scenario in my mind was that she would need surgery to remove whatever blockage she had. I told the vet to do whatever test it took to figure out the cause. She was admitted that morning and was put on fluids for the entire day. I was at my Moms on my lunch break when I got the call, Nibbler did not have any blockages. As soon as I was ecstatic with that news, she hits me with the end result. After a blood test they discovered her kidneys were failing. Those next few days were the worst days of my life. We tried everything. She would get admitted to the vet for the day on fluids and would come home at night with IV fluids since they don’t have 24 hour care. Luckily my Mom was a registered nurse and she would come and administer her fluids for the night. We had our living room set up with blankets and everything that we felt would make her comfortable. We slept with her, woke up with her and even carried her outside so she could pee. She quit eating, and by this point it had been 7 days since she had gone number 2. I tried to get her to eat; I made her a rib eye steak that she wouldn’t touch. She wouldn’t take a treat; she wouldn’t even touch a plain hamburger from McDonalds. That’s when I knew she wasn’t going to recover. Nothing we were doing was helping; her kidneys were too far gone. Her levels never improved. Her last days were tough on her. If I knew then what I know now; I would have never put her through all that. We had no idea the severity of it, no idea it was kidney failure. I wanted to make sure we did everything that we could do. Within a week of her not greeting us at the door she was gone. Looking at pictures of her weeks prior I would have never imagined the road we were about to go down. She had congenital kidney failure. There are not many warning signs. The 2 signs that I can relate to Nibbler was the excessive water drinking and the bad breath but how were we supposed to know? Dogs drink water, dogs have bad breath and she’d been like that since she was a puppy. On the last day we arranged for the vet to come to the house. At this point she couldn’t get up and would have episodes every few hours. What we were doing wasn’t helping. The best decision for her was the hardest one to make. It was time. I replay it like a bad dream. I try not to think about it but sometimes I can’t help it. I try to remember her as her goofy, lovable, hyperactive self. We got her cremated (which I am so glad they have that as an option nowadays) I just couldn’t bear the thought to bury her. After she passed we were faced with another obstacle. We never thought about how our other dogs would react; Heidi, Silver & Chewie. The last couple of days they had stayed at my Moms house so Michael and I could be with Nibbler. When they came home we were slapped in the face with their reactions. They searched for her, looking everywhere. For the first few weeks, every time they came in the house they assumed she’d be there. Once they’d realize she’s gone they would each deal with it in their own way. Chewie would mope and sleep, Heidi would deal by sucking on her stuffed animal toy and Silver would get so upset to the point of nausea. Nibbler was Silvers soul sister; they were like Thelma and Louise. That was the hardest part of the grieving process for me. Watching them slowly come to the realization she’s gone. It is still so fresh, still so unbelievable. We miss her every day. With saying all this here is to the re-start of something good, something positive. Wish me luck… Copyright 2016 © Marilyn Manfrom
3 Comments
michelle murphy
1/19/2016 07:15:08 am
your blog, brought me to tears, bringing back the days, before and after, losing our golden. It took me 6 years, to ever even have another dog, it hit me so hard. I wish you the best, on healing, from the loss of Nibbler. I have also gained a lot of weight this year. So hard, with the long winters we have, can be depressing at times. Hang in there, things will get easier, I wish you the best!
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Marilyn
1/19/2016 06:51:41 pm
Thanks Michelle, means a lot!
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Deb
1/19/2016 10:30:03 pm
“Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.” ~Unknown
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My name is Marilyn and I am 27 years old. I have been overweight for most of my life and on May 1st, 2012 I weighed in at 338 pounds. This blog is about my weight-loss journey.
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