September 03, 2014

a rough but healing time

It was a rough week last week. We knew something was wrong with my 7 year olds sleeping. We'd gone to the Dr every few months since he was little. The Dr always sent us away and told us everything was fine. I finally demanded to have my son seen by an ear nose and throat Dr.. As soon as the Ear Nose and Throat  DR saw him he said he has a level 4 airways obstruction in his throat, and the obstruction was probably to blame for his difficulty learning, emotional out bursts, irritability, etc. So on Thursday I found out my 7 year old son is going to have his tonsils and adenoids removed. At first that sounded horrible to me. But it's supposed to be an easy surgery and all the medical people who know about these things say this will turn his life into something so much easier and happier.

On Friday night I came down with a horrible illness. By Tuesday I wasn't better, went to the Dr's and found out I had strep. For 6 days I've been stuck at the house, bored, unable to train. I was supposed to take the family out to dinner on Saturday (we're on a strict budget, we don't get to eat out much)and camping on Sunday and Monday. we missed both. This sucks. Hopefully I'm going back to work on Wed night.

On a good note I think I've finally come to peace with my Dad not wanting to be a  part of my life. I'm not 100% certain where this peace in my heart came from but I think it's because I asked for my church group to pray for our relationship to get better. Our relationship didn't improve but my heart healed rather unexpectedly.

So back to my Dad. I've come to think each person sees others not as those people are, but as they would be themselves. For example my 2nd step dad thought I liked to have so many pets because I was a control freak. I was shocked and confused when I heard that. I've always had so many pets because I'm a nurturing and paternal person. He saw things incorrectly because he saw me not as I am, but as he would have seen himself. So now with that tid bit of information I realized that I was seeing my Dad's relationship the way I think. To me, there's nothing that means more to me than each one of my kids. I assumed all dad's felt the same way deep down inside them. And if he felt that way then he must think I'm a horrible person for him to not care about me enough to call me more than a couple times a year. Well now I've realized him wanting to have minimal contact with me isn't a problem he has with me, it's just because he's different then me. He has different priorities than me.... And now I've healed from 26 years of guilt and shame. It feels good.

September 02, 2014

exercise bulimia

Well, as you saw from my last post I fell off the weight loss wagon again. I've dieted a thousand times and have never been able to continue to eat healthy or keep the weight off. The closest I came to abstaining from binge eating was 9 months of abstinence and 1.5 years of maintaining a healthy body weight. 
That one time of success I was doing a some things well:
- I was going to 12 step meetings
- I was working with a sponsor
- I was working the 12 steps
- I was praying
- I wrote out a meal plan daily
- I was exercising regularly

The things I was doing wrong:
- I was too obsessed with triathlon and put in so much time training it was taking a crazy amount of time away my family and God 
- I was an Exercise bulimic

I still can't figure out if I had that one long streak of success with my weight and eating because of the good things I was doing or if it was because of the bad things I was doing. 

I found something in the AA book that I'm afraid is me. In chapter 5 of the AA book it says:

"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves."

I'm killing myself by overeating. I can't stop. I don't know what to do. My wife is starting to get scared. I can't stop.

September 01, 2014

low carb diet and olympic weightlifting final update

My low carb diet/experiment went for 10 days before I fell off the wagon. I realize 10 days isn't a long enough time to make any big gains in knowledge, but I can share what bits of info I did pick up.

I found during that time of low carb I gained strength while losing fat. I didn't follow the low carb diet and train long enough to see if the strength gain were equivalent to a regular diet, but i did gain strength while on the low carb. I set a couple lifetime PR's during the 10 days I was low carbing it.

- I fatigued quickly at explosive exercises like snatches and clean and jerks. Training at more traditional weight training was fine, but the balistic exercises I couldn't do many of.

-I couldn't finish the long grueling workouts my coach had planned for me as well as I could on a more traditional diet. I countered the loss of endurance on the hard workout days by eating a high carb meal right before training. I only had to eat the high carb meal a couple times a week, for the harder training days. The other workout days were form and recovery days and I could finish the workout while continuing low carb and without a high carb meal. The high carb meal made it so I could inish my workout just as well as when I was eating a more traditional diet. Eating the high carb pre-workout meal only slowed my weight loss of a low carb diet slightly, barely noticeable amounts..