End of the metro42 challenge

It’s the end of our workplace fitness challenge, and I am happy to report that I went from 138.8 to 126.6 in those 42 days.

 

I weighed in at 125.4Ibs this morning. I like to weight in right after I wake.

 
It’s only taken me four and a half years to get down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Not exactly awe-inspiring, but with that, I would like to say how important nutrition is to your weight-loss goals. 
What I’ve learned:

1. I was consuming far too much processed sugar. I normally have coffee the morning, and coffee later on in the afternoon. These both were loaded down with sugar and cream.

2. I can’t say enough about drinking enough water. I try for 70 oz/day (my body weight divided in half.) I’ve heard this is a good way to ensure you drink enough instead of the old 8 glasses a day rule. 

3. Protein and good carbs: I’m over red meat. Vegan/vegetarian is something I would really like to do for both ethical and health reasons, so it was easy to stop eating red meat. Not quite there yet, so I did eat a lot of chicken and turkey during this process. Fruits and vegetables for carbs! 

4. Overall, a “clean” diet. Not a huge fan of that word, but essentially nothing that comes highly processed. I’m a big fan of foods that don’t have crazy ingredients on the list. I became a huge fan of cauliflower rice curry and turkey meatballs. 

5. Lastly, eating enough. Fuel your bodies. You need more than 1200 calories.(Seriously, who came up with that?!) My calculated BMR is about 1350, meaning that I should never eat under that. This is what your bodies uses for it’s basic functions. I have my MFP calorie goal at 1572, but I’d like to have maintainable cals around 1700. 

I hope some of this information is beneficial! I’d be happy to share more about the process, and I’m excited to continue on, and break below 120. I don’t have a specific goal in mind, but if I can lose a bit more fat, gain some muscles and tighten up my stomach muscles, I’ll be happy. 

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Seizures and fear.

There’s absolutely nothing that can prepare you for it; a seizure.

It’s been almost 2 years since Colleen has had a seizure. And it was not expected at all. She has a favorite crab toy that has a mirror and little pieces that spin around on a track. She plays with it all the time, and likes to lay on her back with this thing in the air. Scares me, but she’s never dropped it on herself so I don’t think there’s much to worry about. Well, Friday night after she had a bath, I was brushing out her hair and putting it in braids. This was her cue to either deploy the defenses of her hands or try to ignore me. She chose ignoring me, along with playing with her toy.

A little while later, right before 8PM, she was playing away, toy in the air. Then she let it down on her face. She was breathing slightly heavier, and I just thought she was doing something silly. So I took out my phone to record her newest antics. After a moment, I moved it and noticed her eyes fluttering a lot. She was very still, not moving. She wasn’t responding to me talking to her, and I picked her up—limp. I couldn’t believe she was having a seizure and I didn’t even know. I laid her across my arms and started the timer on my phone. How long had it been since it started? Tears, consoling.. my poor baby. Not too long later, she came out of it and I hugged her. Those are the longest minutes of your life.. Just over 2 minutes on my phone. I checked the video, which was about 50 seconds long.. the one where I was stupidly recording her instead of realizing she was having a seizure.

Sleepyness after the seizure.

I could go the rest of my life without having to see her go through that. I would very willingly take it upon myself if she didn’t have to go through that. Plus the fear.. She was very tired and grump after the fact. Coupled with her not burping well, it wasn’t until 10:30 where she was finally able to sleep. And I laid down right next to her. How do you sleep after that? Anxiety, fear, depression. It’s just not fair that she has to suffer.
I really hope her embrace watch will be able to help. I’m still not sure if it will be able to sense her type of seizures, so we’ll have to see. For now, I’m waiting until her neurologist office opens. Hoping since her keppra hasn’t been increased in a while that doing some blood work and increasing the dosage will help. I can’t help but hope that maybe without the seizures, her brain her reforming connections, or something that will stop them. Then this happens, and you think, “no, she is still stuck with this monster.”

We need more epilepsy awareness. We need to find a cure..

Help..

I’m writing this in hopes that someone who may have dealt with a similar issue might contact me and give me some glimmer of hope for dealing with some of Colleen’s stomach issues.

Ever since she was a baby it has been extremely hard to burp her whenever she drinks. She seems to go through phases where it’s super easy, and then periods of time where you have about as much luck getting a rock to burp. It’s immensely frustrating to try to guess what exactly is wrong since she can’t communicate, but worst of all, no parent wants to see their child in pain. A pain that you can’t really do much about. I’ve tried those darn gas drops and shelled out $18 for a teeny tiny bottle of homeopathic remedy in hopes it would solve the issue. I’ve rubbed peppermint oil on her belly.

When she does in fact burp easily, it’s a gleeful, happy time. You would’t think it possible for someone to get so exciting about a simple burp, but I will tell you, it’s cause for cake and balloons in this household. Just last night though, I spent almost 2 hours walking her around after a simple sip of water. 2 hours. And still, she would not burp.

I’ve had some question how exactly I know she needs to burp. After she drinks, you can hear things sloshing around in her belly. After she does burp, sloshing disappears and we have a happy baby once more. If it happens to stay in longer than it should, we have a very miserable child until it’s out.

She has been low-tone since birth so after she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, things started to make sense. I’m guessing it’s your muscles that help to push things where they need to go. And if hers are weaker, then of course she would have difficulties. I still can make no sense of the phases though.

I would absolutely love to connect with other parents who may deal with similar situations, who may be able to offer some advice or even sympathize. Help.

Waiting game.

Hey! Did you notice something? After some internal debate, I finally bought http://www.timetobuildcastles.com ! Right now, it’s the domain name that forwards to here. I’m going to try to clean up my page and make it user friendly for my few followers. 😉

I used to say that I was an incredibly patient person. But that is very much in the past, and I’m often told that I just need to relax. And you know how when you say you need to work on something, it seems like you’re provided ample opportunity to do so? I’m (slowly) learning patience.

I have been trying to think back to how long it’s been since we started discussing it, and I absolutely hate the fact that it’s been well over 6 months. Before Christmas, Colleen’s therapist had requested a new script for the specific bed. I found out last week that they had yet to write it. Several phone calls later, I have the new one, but she is off of school this week, so we won’t see her therapist till Monday. I am frustrated.

Her wheelchair finally came in, but I have to update all of Colleen’s insurance information before we can get it. There’s always hurdles to battle over it seems. Hoping to get that sorted this week. We are also still waiting to hear about her Embrace watch. It was December when we found out she was approved to receive one. And I was supposed to be contacted with a code to check out the app and such. Still waiting.

As for health-related updates, I’m coming near the end of the Metro 42 challenge, you’d think I’d have my act together and be making consistent, healthy choices. Right? I had hit 127.6, and was incredibly happy with the results. Then the weekend happened. I tracked everything in MyFitnessPal to the best of by abilities, and to my horror, I’m up to 132 this morning. Calorie wise, I wasn’t too terrible, so I’m not sure if I’m retaining water or whats going on. After I hit under 130, I told myself that I didn’t want to see that number ever again. To say I’m disappointed in myself is an understatement. To top it off, I didn’t get a workout in yesterday when I easily could have. Weekends are the absolute worst in terms of choices, so I need to get better at that.

But, today is a new day, so back at it, and back to making healthy choices. Hopefully it is indeed just water weight (We did have hibachi from Ichiban for Valentine’s, and while it is amazing and delicious, I’m not sure it’s quite worth 4 Ibs. Maybe 2.) I’ve been wanting to ask my doctor, or anyone with hypothyroidism, if when they have higher amounts of sodium, they gain a lot. It seems like that happens with me.