Week 12

Week 12 was tough for us!  I don’t know what happened, but it was one of our toughest weeks to get through.

At the start of Week 12, Andrew is starting to see signs that his weight is starting to drop and we are super excited about that.  But at this point, he’s trying to catch up to where he was at in Week 9.  In Week 9, we had just celebrated that Andrew just said to GOODBYE to 300 lbs!!

It was during Week 9 that Andrew started to adjust his medication.  He’s been taking his BP and Blood Sugar readings regularly and noticed that they have been at an all-time low.  At this point, he decided to cut his medication in half with his doctor’s knowledge.  After one week of cutting his meds in half, his BP and Blood Sugar were still at their lowest.

Week 10, Andrew decides to stop ALL medications!  As I stated in our last health update, we knew his body would take some time to re-adjust from being on all these meds for so long, especially since he was on two diuretics.

Now the scale is going back up and slowly creeping past 300!  UGH!!! We just celebrated leaving the 300 lbs mark and now we are back.  This was so frustrating mentally.  Logically, we knew this would happen, but whatever the case, it still plays with your mind!! We had many conversations to remind ourselves that this was just a temporary phase and that this will pass soon.

At the end of Week 11, we are starting to see a trend with his weight coming down!   Andrew is hovering around 300 lbs, but the weight is going down each day and it won’t be long till he’s back to his weight in Week 9.

Fast forward to Week 12!  I don’t know what happened to us both, but we were both finding ourselves being hungry throughout the day.  Since we started, we didn’t have many hunger pains between eating our meals.  We eat every 2-3 hours and drink plenty of water, so why are we feeling hungry now? We would find ourselves looking in the frig or pantry to see what we could snack on. (That’s dangerous ground to be on.)

We noticed a few things that had changed that could be the reasons why we were feeling hungry more often.

1. We are not getting enough sleep at night.

Since school started, I’ve been taking Zoe to the community college every day. Three days a week we have to be there before 8 am, which means this homeschool mamma’s wake-up time is now earlier than her normal wake-up time.   This new routine change messed up my sleep and eating schedule big time.

For Andrew, he’s been busy working on some projects for our new business that we just started in April!  With the fluctuation of his weight and the pressure of creating your own business, his mind is very active at night and he can’t sleep!

2. We started exercising.

DUH!!  That should have been an obvious reason, but sometimes, when you’re in the midst of it all, sometimes the obvious is not so obvious!!!

3. Drinking Water.

We already drink a lot of water, but I noticed that I wasn’t drinking ALL of the recommended 64 ozs that you should drink every day. Andrew noticed that he was doing the same.  There would be some days that we got so busy and did not finish our water. They say that you are most likely NOT hungry, but rather thirsty when you feel those hunger pains.  When we start to feel what we believe are hunger pains, we try to drink at least 8 oz of water and that usually does help.

We feel that these three reasons all contributed to us feeling hungry.  I’m sure there are other reasons we are missing, but these were some that stood out that we could easily address.

Creating healthy habits like getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night, drinking the recommended 64 ozs of water, exercising(being active) and eating healthy foods are some of the Healthy Habits that contribute to living a healthy life.  In the beginning, we didn’t realize the benefits of having these healthy habits in our life until we started to experience more energy after we started eating right, getting enough sleep and drinking enough water each day.  If we let the stress of this world dictate to us what we are to do, then we will be back at square one before long and would have gained all our weight back and returned to our unhealthy habits.

Although at this time, we are focused on losing the weight, we want to be able to maintain our weight loss and live as long as possible enjoying all that we can in this life that God has given us.   We never established any healthy habits in our lives, so retraining ourselves and creating NEW healthy habits is a work in progress.  The benefit of having so much weight to lose is that we have several months ahead of us to train ourselves and to create long-lasting healthy habits.

As Week 12 comes to a close, we are making the necessary adjustments in our schedule so that we get enough sleep and drink all our water. We are already seeing changes in how we feel.

Weigh In

For our Week 12 weigh-in, I lost 1.8 lbs bringing my grand total to 33.6 lbs.  Andrew lost 6.8lbs and is way below the 300lb mark!  His grand total of weight loss is 55.2 lb since we started our weight loss program.

Week 13

At the end of Week 13, we would have been on the program for three months.  It seems like we have been on this program forever and we are anxiously waiting for this to come to an end.  We easily have six more months before we reach our goal weight and that reality sometimes feels discouraging, especially when we see so many who only have 15-20 pounds to lose and they are at their goal weight in 6-12 weeks.   Can we keep doing this for ANOTHER 6 months????  If we are not careful, we can easily fall into a trap and get off track.

It’s important for us to remind ourselves daily, WHY AM I ON THIS JOURNEY???  We are doing this with ONE goal in mind.  To get HEALTHY.  If we lose our focus and get distracted from our main goal, then when those days come and we find ourselves down because maybe the scale didn’t drop as much as I wished or I’m feeling hungry or I’m getting tired of doing the same routine, we can easily find ourselves being derailed and giving up.   We can’t let that happen!!!

Weigh In

This week, Andrew gained .2 oz.  Because we are doing this together, neither of us likes to see the other gain.  We both know that our weight fluctuates daily, so most likely his weight will drop 2 pounds the next day… if only Tuesdays were our weigh-in day!!!!  To be honest, Andrew did lose 6.8 last week and that in itself is AMAZING! I’m still losing weight and lost 2.6lbs this week bringing my total weight loss to 36.2 lbs.

Thanks for following our journey. Sharing our story to the world is not easy and posting our pictures is WAY out of our comfort zone.   We realize the struggle is real for many and we wanted to document what we are doing for two reasons.

One, to help hold us accountable!   We are at the beginning of our journey and we know that we have a long road ahead of us.

Two, we want to encourage others to help take their health back!  It’s never too late! The hardest part about starting this journey is just saying YES to a healthier YOU!!

To get regular updates on when we post, like our Facebook Page or sign up to receive our Newsletter and we will email you when we have a new post.