Hold Up..... Weight a Minute....

This entire system is plagued by absolutely horrific relationships with food. The vast majority of us can be divided between two categories. Binge eating, or bulimia. Body hatred is big in this system for a variety of reasons, most coming down to size. For years now my sweet sisters have toyed with trying to "fix" the body, but it always comes back to the same results.

Image Credit: http://www.helpyourteens.com/teens-body-image-and-eating-disorders

We have been with Mom and Dad for about 9 months now. When we first moved in with them we were almost 300lbs, hair was falling out, teeth broken and cracked, fingernails peeling, and skin cracking. We had some kind of weird awful cyst putting pressure on our spine and our blood sugar routinely ran in the 300s. My sisters complained about it but were met with a mental block every time they tried to make a change. Daily life was so chaotic that the body refused to respond to good interventions at all.

Fast forward 9 months and the body is now 245lbs. Hair is growing back, teeth are getting fixed, skin and nails are much better. Blood sugars are under 150 more often than not and there's no more weird cysts. Logically we all know these things to be fact. The clothes in our closet are a size we don't remember wearing before. Mentally, we can't see the change. 

All of us are self sabotaging on a regular basis, especially when it comes to carbs. There's some kind of self protection program running that's refusing to allow us to make real progress in the way of weight. Over and over again we can hear F's voice telling us that we are fat and ugly and no one will ever want us. Maybe if we stay fat and no one still wants us, then we run less risk of getting hurt again. Maybe we feel like we deserve to be ugly and huge. 

I want us to be kind to this body. This body has carried us through some incredibly awful events and somehow managed to keep us alive. This body has given birth to the 4 boogers that have made it possible for Mom and Dad to be parents again. This body has found courage and hope where there wasn't any and has fought off an angry gall bladder in order to save the youngest's life in utero. This body has done amazing things. It deserves our kindness, and no, trying to sabotage it to protect it from pain is not a kindness.

We all seem to share the all or nothing trait. We want to do yoga to the point that we physically hurt, or we don't want to do it at all. We want to walk 5 miles or 0 miles. We want to eat 12 cookies or no cookies. We want to test blood sugar 10 times a day or we don't test at all. There's simply no happy medium with us. 

Some of my sisters seem to have a tendency to use exercise to cause the body pain. Those same sisters will make poor food choices for much the same reason. They don't necessarily enjoy the pain, but they believe we deserve the pain. Some of the rest of us want to build strength in the body, while yet others don't want to risk any pain to the body at all. To people outside of this body it looks like laziness, enablers, and a general not caring. Most of us will agree with it and say thats exactly what it is because it becomes too hard to explain and our attempts at explaining end up sounding like excuses.

And still yet, it could also be parts of our addictive personalities showing up. Some of us are addicted to pain, some are addicted to nicotine, some are addicted to being hurt. Sadly, none of us are addicted to being happy. All of these emotions, thoughts, feelings, wants, desires, and needs pile on all day long and quickly become overwhelming for the emotion regulators (Jenna and Mia) to keep up with. The outside becomes challenging and we can't figure out simple things like what to eat or how to eat, or how to prepare what to eat. It's a conversation Mom has with us a lot. She, like many others, view it as laziness. It frustrates her because she knows we have the skill set. We are completely capable of cooking macaroni and cheese, or following recipe directions, etc. We just end up with this massive mental block and it becomes emotionally raw and almost impossible. Like words scramble in our head and we stop understanding the simplest of instructions. It's frustrating. Especially when we know we KNOW this. 

So today, today I made a protein shake (protein powder and almond milk) for breakfast. I'm drinking water. I did 40 minutes of yoga this morning. Our muscles ache. I am out of brain power and feeling pretty defeated in terms of body image/help/etc. I feel like we are letting down our family who knows we are capable of better. I wish I didn't care what they thought. 

Sabrina

Our Aching Feet.....

Most weekday mornings we head out for a walk. We aim for anywhere between 3 and 5 miles, although sometimes we're lucky to hit two miles.... haha.  The walks weren't something we could really do in our old life. We didn't feel safe enough or comfortable enough and it always seemed like our time was better spent in other ways. Here, though, we are greeted every morning by this sight:

Our mountains wish us good morning (taken 11/1/15 with the samsung S6 around 7:45am).

We really didn't think the walks were accomplishing much except for aching feet. (Pretty sure we have a muscle/tendon problem in the right foot, but no pain no gain, right?!). When Mom realized we were serious about the walking she decided we needed new shoes and that has helped a lot (stupid arch in the right foot is still killing us tho....shhh). We seriously had no shortage of aches and pains but we own a mirror and nothing seemed to be changing. It was getting pretty disappointing, which was leading to feelings of defeat and failure. Those feelings were, in turn, fueling some massive bad energy and I'm willing to bet causing us to overreact to other things. We were getting tired of seeing this (see picture below) and still feeling rejected and worthless (other things contribute to that feeling but this wasn't helping):

This a partial screen shot of our Fitbit Flex today (11/1/15).

The negative emotions were eating us alive. We were second guessing a lot of our recent major decisions and trying to figure out how we had screwed up so badly in life. We were trying to figure out what was wrong with us and why we are always rejected and/or left behind. It was just bad. If you've read other posts, you know how bad things got. Everyone in this house was dealing with their own problems and adjusting to their transitions in their own way. Everyone was battling big things... and we were sick. We spent almost all of last week with a bad cold and a mild fever. That helped NOTHING at all, especially because we couldn't safely go for our walks. We could barely make it safely across the driveway. 

Being down for the count last week, having to rest and not walk seemed like a great thing. It seemed so wonderful to not ache and not deal with the arch pain in our right foot. It continued to seem like that, but our life seemed to be falling apart at the same time. We were a mess, our life felt like a huge mess. 

Thursday of last week Mom insisted that we were not only going on our walk, but that we would complete two miles before coming home. Honestly, I (meaning me, Alayna) was pretty sure she had lost her mind because we were still running a slight fever so in my mind we were still sick. Sick kids don't go for walks. Sick kids binge on Netflix. I wanted us to binge on Netflix. Needless to say, if you've ever met my mother, we lost and we went for our 2 mile walk. We lived through it and Jenna at least, was pretty proud of us for getting it done. Then we went back to hanging out with Netflix. (side note: Netflix is pretty much our only friend here, so we're pretty attached...lol)

Friday morning comes around and Mom, once again, insists on a 2 mile walk. We ended up with close to 2.5 miles on Friday. 

By yesterday, we realized that when we don't walk, we miss a lot of benefits from walking. We miss our park, our mountain, and our trees.

More importantly, we miss out on the good feelings that come from walking. We've always heard that walking releases endorphins and raises mood, blah blah blah. I can honestly tell you that the blah blah blah is real. Our mood and our life was spiraling out of control because we weren't doing what we needed to do in order to take care of ourselves. No, we shouldn't be walking when we're sick but we could have tried sooner. Mom knew though. She knew how badly we relied on that, even when we didn't. She made the choice to force us back into it knowing we didn't feel well. 

That's not to say that our problems as a family were all due to a lack of walking. God I wish it were that easy. No, we as a family have a lot of work to do in order to make everyone feel welcome, safe, and happy. But we can make it better on ourselves and, in turn on our family, by keeping up with our walking. 

This morning, while we were hanging out in Mama's room watching her go through her laundry, she had us try on some pants. Almost everything she gave us to try on fit, and most of them were smaller than what we already had. She had noticed that we were struggling to keep our pants up. We noticed too, kinda, but figured we stretched them out or something. We never considered that we were ready for smaller pants. Her scale (which she only lets us use once a week) showed us today that we have lost 30.2 pounds since we moved here in August. That's huge. It's seriously huge and we never noticed. I spent a bit looking in the mirror today, and I really can't see it. The neighbor sees it. Aunt Leslie says she sees it in pictures. Mom says she sees it. We just don't.

What we do see: Our hair is growing back thicker and in much better shape, our nails are getting healthier, our blood sugar is almost always close to perfect and a blood sugar level of 90 feels great. When we first moved here 130 triggered a low reaction. Our average blood sugar sat around 300 and refused to budge.  

Today, after completing 3 miles and seeing the scale, the clothes fitting differently, and spending some not emotional, perfectly normal time with Mama, I feel good. Not only do I feel good, I feel hopeful, strong, and I feel a weird sort of peace. I don't really feel safe yet, that I think will come in time. I think I need to work on not pushing myself to feel safe. Pushing this system to feel something we aren't ready for or can't seem to grasp always seems to lead to disaster. I think I'm going to do my best to keep my sisters and I looking ahead and I'm going to keep building my support system. I love my family and I won't give up.

Alayna Jade