Reflecting

It's been a day full of the usual Saturday stuff- shopping, chopping and weigh in. Even though i gained 3.8- or everything that I lost last week- I am not discouraged for some reason. I know that I am doing everything that I can with intake and calories, and there is something else going on. It balance of essential fatty acids makes a lot of sense to me, as does the affects of coffee. It's not that it makes me eat more or that I load it down with cream and sugar, but rather that it stresses my adrenal glands. I am going through menopause, and part of that process means the ovaries shut down and other parts of the endocrine system pick up the slack . It is not that these glands begin to ovulate, but instead take over the biochemical functions for the body. Ovaries control a lot more than just releasing eggs. While in transition, the body becomes a little baffling, with things like strange temperature shifts, heart palpitations, changes in digestion and more. While at 20 I could live on gallons of coffee a day, at 50 my body does not take kindly to it. So along with giving up nuts and nut butters, i will try , once again, to give up coffee. Green tea helps with the need for a lift, but does not have the negative affects in the body.

Perhaps if I say this often enough I will be able to live without coffee. Problem is ,I LOVE coffee. I love the way it smells, tastes and feels in your mouth. There is not a single substance in the world that can compare to it. Coffee has been the best friend that took over after alcohol and cigarettes left my life. I grew up in a house were the coffee pot was always on and the coffee urn was the first thing gathered for any party. Lately coffee has been the daily loving gesture my husband does for me. Heavy sigh.

But yet, if coffee is the thing that is preventing me from at long last becoming the person I want to be , how can I hang onto it ? I have spent all but 18 months of my life as the fat person. I entered first grade as a 200 pound little girl, and just kept going. I finally acchived the weight of 310 pounds before my 30th birthday, and did something about it, not in order to look good or be healthy, but to conccive. I lost 110 pounds, got pregnant, and the battle returned as a result of becoming a mom. It was not simply baby weight, but weight gained from a hormone imbalance that is only truely cured through weight loss- and weight loss is the hardest thing to do in life because of it. Coffee and refined carbs become one enemy, essential fatty acid ratio becomes yet another. And guess what - NEITHER of these are moved even a micrometer closer to balance because of time spent in exercise. That has to be embraced for other reasons.

So thus begins a new week, a new attempt and yet another pick myself up and dust myself off attempt. I must say there are so many other benefits to this way of life that the scale slips into unimportance when held up to the rest. The biggest reason, the original motivation for the journey is still there- my son. His progess is slower right now. He has lost 73 pounds and has gotten to the point where weight loss happens a pound or less at a time, but it is still plugging away. My husband is still losing and we are doing this as a family. There is great companionship along the way, as well as a lot of shared lessons. It is a bond like few other famileis experience. Perhaps this is the reason that the movement of the scale does not phase me much these days.