Once Upon a Time . . .

   Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved Disney princesses. She collected all of the Princess Barbies and always said "Someday I want to look like Snow White!" Unfortunately for that little girl she couldn't stay in her room and pretend to be a princess all day; she had to go deal with reality. The reality was that people around her were never happy and she couldn't control it...but she could control food. She could hide blocks of cheese under the couch for later. She could eat until SHE decided it was enough. She could have total control over food even if she couldn't control anyone around her. . . . THE END

   It took me about 10 years to realize that there was a problem. The relationship I had with food was unhealthy, but it still took me another 4 years to WANT to find the root of my problem. I know for a lot of people it may seem like a pretty simple thing to do: acknowledge you have a problem. But for the people actually living through it and experiencing it, you know it's not easy to look internally and point the finger at yourself. You can try all you want to blame someone else but at the end of the day you have to take ownership over the situation.

   My Grandma never recovered from her divorce from my Grandma...my mother was always hunting down my biological father to pay him child support.... my mom and Grandma just couldn't get along when they lived together... my mom was always stressed out trying to juggle a full time job, night school and raising a child. Life wasn't that peaceful for the people around me, but I couldn't do anything to make it better...I was just a kid. That's most likely when I began my unhealthy relationship with food. I would eat more when it was more apparent that I couldn't control things going on around me.

Disney Princesses don't eat their feelings...neither should I!

Success Story

   I believe that I've mentioned before that I am a gown stylist at a bridal shop...Camarillo Bridal. This week I had a very interesting encounter with a stunning woman. My manager was helping her find a gown for the Navy Ball and boy oh boy did they find the right gown. It was hugging her body in all the right places! I thought to myself, "Gosh I would love to be able to wear a dress like that after my surgey." Just as that thought ran through my head my manager said "She just lost a ton of weight too." When I asked her how she did it she told me she's had a weightloss surgery (gastric bypass).

   She was nice enough to show me the "before and after" pictures and it was jaw-dropping. She looked like a completely different person! The best part about meeting her was something she told me:

 "A lot of people say that surgery is THE EASY WAY to lose weight....it's really not." She made the point that you are essentially losing control of your own body and there are prices to pay for not listening to your body. That was something I'd never thought of before. I used to be one of those people who thought surgery was an easy way to lose the weight, but as I've worked with my nutritionist I've come to realize that you are forcing the portion control. You are shocking the heck out of your body and sort of giving up your control over what you put in it. For a lot of us who are overweight, we overeat because food is something we always have control over.... it's all about control!

Goal for the week... practicing SELFcontrol!

ONE MONTH TO GO

So here's the skinny ( or not so skinny in my case) about what's going on this next month:

* I just found out Saturday that my packet was barely submitted to insurance 3 weeks ago (4 weeks in 2 days), which puts us behind 2 weeks. This has been EXTREMELY irritating! I specifically asked to be notified the day it was submitted so that I could begin my 45 day count.I was NEVER notified and my consultant won't give me the date it was submitted.

Now remember... we are on a time crunch with this surgery because my insurance changes on October 1st...that means in 30 days! So if we don't get it approved ASAP this surgery might not happen!!!

I AM GETTING REALLY ANGRY AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO START OVER AGAIN.

Eggs 'N' Things

I have been trying to find ways to update this blog while I'm in INSURANCE LIMBO, so I thought that I could show you guys some of the transitional changes that I've made to my diet and share some recipes with you. For example, who doesn't love scrambled eggs? This is how I changed up your standard scrambled eggs to make them more filling and get a serving of veggies in. . .



Step 1: cut up 1 small onion (white or yellow) & 3 roma tomatos

Step 2: Saute the tomatos and onions in a tiny bit on olive oil and sea salt. Then add 4 large eggs.

In the end it was enough for both my husband and I. I usually will serve it with a slice of whole wheat toast and fruit or cottage cheese.

ENJOY!

CRAZY TOWN

The last 2-3 weeks have been insane!

1. We had a couple people leave work so I had to pick up extra hours.
2. I had a lot of gardening to catch up on.
3. I've been on the phone with insurance and my case working quite often.
4. We completely cleaned out the garage.
5. Our washing machine broke twice so we needed to get it fixed twice (which as you know  means you sit around the whole day waiting for the repair man to arrive)

6. Then I had to catch up with all the laundry that piled up while the washing machine was broken...including my grandma's dirty clothes.

7. I also had to begin the process of registering for classes. Fun stuff!
8. I also started my own scrapbooking store on ETSY.COM so I've been doing a lot of prep for that....

   With all of this going on I unfortunately haven't gone on any walks for about 2 weeks. However, within the next couple of days I'll be posting a new workout schedule since my hours at work have changed.

Stay tuned!

Status Update

So right now I am hanging in INSURANCE LIMBO...just waiting for insurance to pull through and approve my surgery. I am not gonna lie, this has been the most stressful 2 weeks of this whole process. Let's take a quick look at my timeline so that you can see my frustration:


May 7th- Meet my Doctor
May 11th- Blood Work
May 14th- Sleep Study & Psycological Evaluation
May 23rd- Nutrition Consult #1
May 25th- Upper GI
June 18th- Nutrition Consult #2
July 16th- Nutrition Consult #3 (the final one)

As you can see everything happened rather quickly with a lot of communication between myself and my case worker. Her name is Luli and she was fantastic at keeping me organized and scheduling everything. She even got insurance to cut me a break on what my financial responsibility is. It's usually $700, but I only had to pay $450.

However....

As soon as I completed my final nutrition consult, the communication abruptly ended. There was a whole week where I was trying to find out if my packet had been submitted to insurance and if there was anything else they needed on my end. I was extremely upset because I wanted everything to go smoothly and I wanted to get the surgery date before summer was over. That was extremely important to me because my mom would be available to help Ryan take care of me before the school year started. After a week I was able to finally speak to someone and found out that they had been waiting on one more report and that it could take up to 45 days for insurance to approve my surgery.

The 2 weeks after that has just been a waiting game and I've come to realize that the surgery probably will not happen until September. That's just something I'm going to have to accept. Luckily there has been much better communication and I'm glad I started being more proactive about getting status updates.