I hate prednisone :-(

A'salaamu alaikum ya'll. Seems I was prematurely elated that I was showing no signs of the prednisone doses. I now have the swelling. My hands, fingers, neck, face and abdomen are all swollen. Niiiice. Looks great, feels better. Of course the number on the scale has inched up but I don't know if its weight gain or just fluid. Allahu alim.

At any rate, we'll see within the next two weeks. I had a bit of a rough go of it for a few weeks, had alot of pain as well from gastritis. Yippee. :-) So no weigh-in right now. It'll just depress me. I'm a numbers girl, yeah, but I also feel the swelling.

In the beginning, I took photos daily to show the progress of the cushing's syndrome which is the name for what happens when you get high levels of prednisone in your body. So at first, as I said, nothing really changed so I stopped. I think I'll take a photo tonight and if it's a dramatic as I think I'll post the pics for our elucidation. :-)

Please make du'a for me; I really want to lose weight. I do feel a little defeated that I got sick right as I was making good progress and now I feel I've been derailed. Insha'allah I can regain my momentum. Ma salaama...

Week 3 day 7: I don't wanna weigh in tomorrow!

A'salaamu alaikum ya'll. I feel like a big fat F for failure. Or F for fat, works both ways. :-) I ended my week -5 points. Yep, -5 meaning I used ALL my discretionary points plus 5 I didn't have. Now I have been alot more active this week which technically entitles me to exchange my activity for points for more food if necessary. I didn't exercise but went out in the snow 2 times (seriously it was hard! lol) and had some other projects which typically use more energy than I normally expend.

I really don't want to go to weigh-in tomorrow. I will haaaaate to see a) I lost nothing or b) I gained!!!! Oh the horror! Because... even though I slipped up a bit I still did soooo much better than I was doing before! As I said, at breakfast alone I usually skip 1 turkey sausage and 1 egg, that's 200 calories there. IF I get something out I get the smallest sandwich and a small fry (maybe once a week that happens). I really keep myself from just eating what I want.

Oooooooooh noooooooo! I just remembered I had a lindt chocolate truffle. Arghhhhhhhh! I don't wanna know the points for it! (sigh) 

OK a positive thing is the fact that I am not stressed like a true stressed, I'll just eat exactly as I want, I have size 20 pants, no worries kinda stressed. I still paid attention and limited from what I might have normally done. I have come to the solid conclusion I don't normally eat so much as eat things that individually have alot of needless calories.

I am not giving up sisters. I will persevere and insha'Allah will succeed. I think a huge thing for me will be to set an exercise time and just stick with it. I have a hard time carving out "me" time. Yeah, like most women. :-) Exercise, although as I said before can be done in the gym here RIGHT DOWN THE FLIPPIN' HALL, takes me out of the home. Where I have some unruly stepkids and a cute little 2 yr old who says "mama, mama, you are nice, i love you so much, you are my life". Wallah, she said that. So you can imagine how hard it is for me to say, ok I'm going down the hall, no you can't come, stay here...

Ummmm as I type that I see how silly it is but what can I say? I'm 38 and this is my last baby and by gosh I'll baby her!!!! Actually she is very independent and self-actualized. (That's a snobbish word and I'm kinda sorry I used it. lol. But not sorry enough to erase it cause it's funnier to leave it and type this loooong explanation. :-D) 

Don't remember where I was going with that so I'll just sign off and please sisters, make dua for me that Allah gives me the strength to succeed. Amin!!!!!!! Ma salaama ya'll.....

Week 3 days 4-5: sorry!

1500+ calories...yikes!!!!!!

A'salaamu alaikum ya'll. I was really tired last night and ended up going to bed before I made my post. My sincerest apologies. :-)

I didn't do well the day before. Now again, I say that but I am still within my points, I just know I made poor choices. For example:

I went to Applebee's yesterday. Now they have a WW menu there (not why I went, we live in a small town and I was tired of fish sandwiches from McD's!) but I didn't pick from it. I wanted the Crispy (big warning!) Orange Chicken Bowl. Another bad thing: I didn't check the calories before I went which would have been easy. Now WW doesn't count calories per se but I know if something logs heavy it will be high in points (duh!). So unprepared out I go.

I fully intended to share it with Aaminah (it's pretty big and I can't eat it all myself) but it has a sweet-n-spicy sauce (YUM!). So I ordered sauce on the side to share with her but by the time I ordered her a drink and fries it was cheaper just to buy her a kids' meal and let her graze off my plate as she wanted. So another big mistake: having a huge portion with no built-in failsafe. :-)

I ate more than I normally would (?) but still had about 1/3 leftover. (I also shared some with her but I like to over-project, not under, on my points.) Alhamdulillah! I forgot our box of take-home. I am happy because I would have finished it off that night.

Remember my weekly points target is 31? Well this dish clocks in at 42!!!!! The 2/3 I possible ate put me at 28 points for that dish alone. Oh my goodness! I had no idea! So I did a fair amount of damage with that little meal and pretty well demoralized myself. I tried to watch the rest of my day but of course ended up dipping into my discretionary points. Grrrr! I wanted to wean myself off of them but looks like that won't be this week!

Anyway yesterday was a bit of poo and today wasn't too much better; I went over my target by a few points and am down to about 18 discretionary points. I really wanted to make this my week to shine and lose more than my 1.8 I lost last week. I don't think it will happen.

I've been kind of active with some little things here and there but not real exercise. I realized this is my week to crave food (in relation to where I am in my cycle) so it did help me to quit mentally beating myself up. Insha'allah I can stay on track these next 2 days and then next week is a new chance!

Ma salaama ya'll....