Long time, no blog...

It has been so long since the last time I blogged, I had to look way back under links on Facebook to even remember where I moved my blogging to! LOL

Forgive me my friends, for it has been over three months since I last blogged. :o)

Things have been pretty busy and continually hopping for me in the past three months. So far, all tests (Pap with the gynecologic oncologist every three months and tumor markers via blood work every month) have shown no signs of cancer. Praise God!!! I was still having trouble with vertigo and just a general feeling of dysequilibrium, but after more testing, and a completely normal brain MRI, it has now seemed to clear up. I have not had that feeling for about a month now. Again, I am praising God for that!!!

Meanwhile, my weight has ballooned up to the highest it has ever been.

What I am about to share with you is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Being obese is embarrassing...no, it is humiliating. But they say one of the first steps to recovery is to admit you have a problem, so here I am. My hope and prayer is that as I work through this with God's help that maybe someone else will be helped along the way too.

I have struggled with weight issues for as long as I can remember. If you look at pictures of me in high school, you might not believe it, but I was always comparing myself to my friends even then and I always felt I was fat. As an adult, I started putting on more pounds and have gone up and down in my weight more times over the years than I can even remember.

About halfway through chemo, I got to the point where it was too difficult for me to exercise anymore. I had been walking at least 30 minutes a day 4-5 times a week and was maintaining my weight for awhile, which was already too high. But after my hemoglobin started dropping, along with my energy and ability to breathe normally most of the time, I got to the point I was just sitting around basically waiting for chemo to be over. In the meantime, I watched TV and ate.

My weight started going up and by the time I finished chemo, I thought, okay, I can get started on Weight Watchers and exercising again and get this weight off and get healthy. Just the opposite happened. I continued to eat more and watch a lot of TV. It was pretty much the equivalent of burying my head in the sand. I did not want to think about my weight. I did not want to think about all the bills that had piled up when I could not work full-time and the financial mess we were in. And, I most certainly did not want to think about the possibility of the cancer coming back.

I blissfully continued to escape with food and TV. Thankfully, God loved me enough to intervene.

Last week as I was working, I was suddenly overcome with the whole situation of me running away and not truly facing my emotions, etc. I had reached my highest weight ever, and while sitting at my desk typing away, I just broke down. I got on my knees and cried out to God for help.

That evening, I was online and came across something by another woman who had struggled with gluttony and she had something typed out in all caps that hit me like a ton of bricks:

GOD DOES NOT WANT YOU DRUNK ON FOOD!

You see, I sobered up a few years ago after struggling with a problem of overindulgence with alcohol. I am what most people would call a borderline alcoholic or social alcoholic. I got to the point that I did not know when to say when. I would drink until the bar closed, or until I blacked out. Yea, it was pretty bad. Then one New Year's Eve while at a friend's house, I cried out to God for help that night, and I have been sober ever since. In fact, it will be 16 years as of January 1st.

I was feeling pretty good about that - not in a prideful way like "look what I did" but just in the fact that God had heard my cry and truly helped me to overcome that stronghold on my heart. So you can just imagine what I felt when I read the words above. I completely broke down. It hit me that I was no longer getting drunk on alcohol - I had just switched over to doing it with food.

A lot of you will probably not understand this blog. You have never had problem withs self-control or addiction. However, some of you will totally get what I am saying.

When you can quit something cold turkey, it is hard, but it is easier than having to still deal with it on a daily basis. You cannot quit eating cold turkey for the rest of your life. So, what do you do?

I believe each person has to find the answer to that themselves, but I know for me, it is about learning how to eat like a naturally thin person. I learned this a few years ago when I went through something called Weigh Down, but unfortunately I pretty much treated it just like any "diet" where I did it, lost a bunch of weight, and then went back to eating too much again. But since then, I have watched people like my mother-in-law, who has never been overweight a day in her life, and my grandmother, who has never had more than maybe 10 pounds to lose, as well as some friends of mine. They eat whatever they want to; however, they only eat what they need when they are physically hungry. They do not overeat all the time. They do not binge.

I quit smoking one year to the day after I sobered up from alcohol, and I thought that was the hardest thing I had ever done. This is harder...but with God's help, I am going to take it one day at a time and learn to eat only what my body needs for nourishment and quit using food as a drug.

And so it begins...