Sunday...Weigh In

I will chat about my weigh in first. I got on the scale tonight and it says I lost another pound. That may not be a lot to some of you but it's a lot for me!! I also lost another inch off my waist and hips, those crunches must be working!!! I started out at 235 lbs 23 weeks ago and now I am at 231. To me that's great I just hope I can keep it up. I have 7 more day on my crunch challenge but really only 5 since there is 2 rest days in there, tomorrow being one thank goodness. I barely made ti through last night's 125.

Last night was an extremely hard for me as was today. I had so many muscle spasms all the way up to a 1/2 hour before getting on my bike tonight. I get some really bad ones that bring me to tears, that start just from moving, the ones that are the worst are the ones in my ribs(right side). I am also not sure if it's the crunches or the bike that are causing the lower back pain but it's getting worse! Well I guess that will be the end of my complaints for tonight.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

I don't know how I did it but I managed 30 minutes on my bike tonight. That equaled 6 miles, and 600 calories burnt!!! I also did my 120 crunches today. I am at day 22 only 8 more days left!!!!

So, I have been asked what I am going to do after this 30 day challenge is done or if I will continue working out. I know I am going to continue working out, I am not sure if I will try another challenge or not. I may just come up with a workout I can live with and not a crazy amount of crunches. I really want to try to take off 80 lbs. or so. I am just not sure of myself if I can do this.

Pretty Good Day!!

At first I didn't want to get out of bed this morning but I made myself. I promised to go play baseball with my nephews. After I got up and got around I was feeling much better. I met my sister and the brats at the baseball field. It was already getting hot out but we lasted almost an hour. I hit the ball every time I went up to bat. I ran the bases 3 times and played catch with them. It was a good workout for me. By the time I got home I was drenched in sweat.

Next, Jake and I were off to do some grocery shopping. A few hours later we return home. Then off to the farm to feed the steer, back home, and off to my sister's for dinner. I hung out there until 7 pm because her house is a lot cooler than mine!!

Finally at 8:30 I made myself get on the bike under the cooler. I pushed and did 25 miles, burnt 500 calories, and rode a total of 5 miles. I didn't do the crunches today because of not remembering not to do them yesterday, so back at them tomorrow.

Thursday, June 27th

So again another 2 am work out, I did 115 crunches and worked with the elastic bands. If I didn't have memory issues due to the chiari I may have remembered that today was suppose to be a rest day for the crunch challenge, day 20. But oh well I got them done and maybe I will just rest tomorrow.

I have to say overall today I was pretty lazy. I cleaned my closet a little and did a load of laundry. I did get my 20 minute bike ride in tonight. It's getting hotter and may want to do that at 2 am if it doesn't start cooling off sooner.

I have to share another thing I despise about having chiari...it's not being able to read a good/bad book. If I start reading, a few pages later I forget what I am reading so I have to go back. There is also the intense headaches I get from reading more than 10 minutes at a time. I have always enjoyed sitting down reading and hate that I can't do it any more. I can't even stay online any more for very long, my eyes get very tired and start going blurry. My ophthalmologist said eventually I may loose my sight due to my glaucoma. In the last 6 months my eye sight declined 40%. I hate to see what it's like when I go back in August. :-(

Oh, just a warning if I forget and give you info I have given before please excuse me or if my writing seems like ramblings. I do that a lot. Probably caused by never sleeping.

A Better Day

I could not sleep at all last night. So I found myself doing a workout at 2 am, I did my 110 crunches and worked out with my elastic bands. So I got my day done for my crunch challenge early. I thought for sure that I would wake up in horrible pain, well if I ever would go to sleep. I finally went to sleep around 4 am, but woke up every hour or so. I was really surprised when I got up at 8 am and I didn't feel horrible. I had my usual headache and neck ache but it was tolerable today. Tonight I did my 20 minute bike ride. I was feeling great when I hit 4 miles before I reached the 20 minutes.

The best feeling of the day today was when I went to get dressed this morning. I had planned on wearing my SF Giants t shirt because I was going to my nephew's Junior Giants game. All that know me know I love my GIANTS!!! I usually put on my shirt then pull it down over my knees to stretch it out, I don't like clothes that are clingy or the least bit tight. I put it on and I didn't have to stretch it at all. I usually hate pictures of myself but I had to share one showing it wasn't tight any more.

I got through it!!

I woke up feeling better today. I think because I slept for a full 4 hours straight!!! But as soon as I stepped out of bed I didn't feel great. I almost fell trying to stand up. I have a horrible pain in both my knees and my hip. It's probably a combination of me pushing myself on the bike and the rain. Of course I have been doing the reverse crunches too that do use the lower half of your body. I have made it through the day not doing much at all, well I did manage to get the living room vacuumed, cleaned out behind the couch, the kitchen swept and mopped, and the never ending laundry. I also did my 105 crunches. So tonight I am giving my lower half a rest and skipping the bike.

Now that, that is over, I have a little rant. I just want to let everyone (if anyone) that reads this blog that this is not just for me to complain about my aches and pains (as someone left a nice message). It is to track my weight loss along with what I deal with on a daily basis with having Chiari Malformation. It also helps keep me motivated to keep up with this journey that may take me longer than other people my weight. I also didn't start this because anyone said anything about my weight. If fact I have someone in my life that tells me that I look good the way I am. Of course who knows he may be a cubby chaser and leave me if I loose too much weight(LOL)! So please only leave comments that help me and supposrt me not make me feel worse about myself!

6/24/13

I woke up feeling somewhat better than yesterday. I didn't sleep until noon and I got some laundry done today. I am dealing with some nausea but I did let that keep me down.

One thing I really hate about Chiari besides all the pain, is the forgetfulness. I mean when I was in school I was an excellent student. I could remember any phone number you needed me too. I excelled in school I never got below a B in any subject where English being my best and favorite. I am at a point now that I can't remember anything. I can sit here for over an hour trying to remember how to spell a simple word, like the other night I could not for the life of me remember how to spell quiet. I finally used the word silent instead. I do that all the time, change whole sentences to use a different word. Let me tell you I don't know what I'd do without spell check. On with my work out!

Today I don't how but I made it through my 100, yes that was 100, crunches. No I did not do them all at once. I am doing them in 3 different ways so I don't kill my self. I did 25 regular crunches, 25 reverse crunches, then I waited about an hour(only because Troy was asleep in the living room and didn't want to disturb him) then I did 50 with his AB thingy. Tonight I did only 20 minutes, 4 miles, and 400 calories burnt. I didn't think I was going to make it through that because my hip has really been bugging me today. But I did push through it and did get the 20 minutes.

As far as eating I had some honey nut cheerios this morning, and 2 perogies tonight, I don't feel like eating today.

I have decided I would have a weigh in on Sunday's so I don't drive myself crazy with the scale.

Very hard day!!

This morning started out very bad! I woke at 6 am with a horrendous headache, probably the same as a migraine, but a chiari headache. I let the dog out took my 800mg of ibuprofen and 50mg of tramadol ( a nonnarcotic pain med that doesn't do much for me. A side note I don't like taking pain meds, but if I did want them I have 2 doctors that refuse to give me any. I went back to bed and did a lot of tossing and turning. The dog wanted back out at 9 am, this time I had to struggle to get myself up. My head was hurting so much worse, but I made myself get up. I took more of my meds, threw on some clothes, woke Jake up, and then went to feed the steer. When I got outside I totally understood why I felt the way I did. I must have missed something the weatherman said last night. It was cloudy and raining, this always makes my symptoms so much worse. When I returned home I did something so unlike me, I crawled back in bed. I slept on and off until 12:30. Mind you today I could have stayed in bed the whole day, and I very rarely do that. I forced myself to get out of bed. I again took more of my pain meds. I have even kept the volume off of my phone today so I didn't have to hear it vibrate.

Here is a list of chiari symptoms, of these symptoms here are the ones that effect me. Now it's not daily that I have these symptoms and I don't have them all at once. I have all the ones in the first part, all except 3 in the second section, but only 3 in the last part.

At 4 I took Troy to work then went to Elena's for dinner, just thank goodness I didn't have to cook. That brings up a topic that someone asked, but they were not serious about it, I just thought I would explain it. If any of you read my other blog cookingtogetherwithjake, you know we cook a lot of high calorie foods. The reason for this is Jake requires a high calorie diet to keep the weight on him that he has. If you don't know about Jake he has 2 rare life threatening diseases, one of which causes a form of anorexia, he also has food allergies. I am a single mom that works as a one on one aide, so I do not make a whole lot of money. I buy the foods Jake needs. His food is more important so I eat what will keep him "healthy". So, I have decided that instead of changing what I eat I would cut my portions. Which for those of you who know me know that I have never ate big portions of food. That is one thing that has always bothered me, some people think just because people are overweight they eat a lot, this is not true. Ok enough of that.

I came home tonight and managed to do 25 minutes, 5 miles, and burn 500 calories. Thank goodness it was a rest day on my crunch challenge. However tomorrow is 100 crunches, oh boy I can't wait for that....sarcasm!!!

My goals and current progress

First of all I would like to share a link so if you would like to find more out about Chiari you can. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/chiari/detail_chiari.htm

Now I would like to share where I started and how I have done so far. Well when I started this I weighed 235 lbs. Please no comments about my weight. I know I am over weight and this is why I am trying to do all of this. With in the 15 days of doing this I have lost 3 lbs, 2 inches off my waist, and 1 inch off my hips.

I am so happy and proud of my self and I am hoping my body allows me to keep this up. This has not been easy for me at all. There has been days where I didn't even want to get out of bed much less get on my bike and ride it for 20 minutes or longer. There has also been days where there is no way that I could possibly get up on that bike and ride it because my head hurt so bad. My bike was given to me by my aunt and uncle, it isn't new at all so it is very loud. I wish I could afford a quiet one, but that is not in my budget. So for now I will do what my body allows me to do.

My story

I have always been overweight my whole life. I have tried many times to loose weight but something always come up and I stop. Also all my life I have suffered from horrible headaches from the time I can remember. I also has sever neck and back pains, weakness in my arms, legs, hands, and feet. I also have always had problems with my eyes, pressure behind them, they twitch, I have double vision too, and in the last year I have lost 40% of my eye sight.

Now how does all of that link to my weight loss and my Chiari. Just a little insight here. In 2007 I started doing exerciser with a Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies 3. I did this every night for 11/2 hours. I was making real progress, within 6 months I had lost 45 lbs. At this same time my mom had been dx with pancreatic cancer and my youngest son was very ill, but I digress. The workouts seemed to help me deal with all the stress I was put under. Then one day my vhs tape broke. I looked every where to try to replace it, I even tried different ones but the didn't get me motivated at all. So I decided to take up walking. I started out slow but soon increased to 6 miles a day.

One day I was taking my sister to the airport but we didn't get very far. There was a big truck stopped in front of us so I stopped, the next thing I knew he was slamming into the front on my car. The hood was almost up to the windshield. After that, that's when I noticed some of my things I had dealt with as a child and teenager were increasingly getting much worse.

Now every time I would go for a walk I would just fall for no reason what so ever. No matter how short my walk was I would fall. My headaches( at that time we thought migraines), the tingling and numbness in my limbs kept getting worse. It got hard to hold my head up. Sleep really doesn't happen for me much, and I could go on forever. I went to my doctor who thought I was crazy and told me to seek hypnosis. Let's just say I didn't go back to him for many years. Finally an appointment with my GYN, he asked how things were and I broke out in tears. He said with my symptoms he felt I had MS. He sent me to a neurologist. He ordered a MRI and there it was a 7 mm chiari malformation. But he doesn't feel that's waht's causing all my issues so I am getting a second opinion hopefully soon.

 In the mean time I want to push myself into some weight loss. I started this because my sister wants me in her wedding the end of July and I want to loose a few pounds to look better in the dress I need to wear. Then there is the person in my head wanting to loose at least 80lbs. With having Chiari sometimes it makes it almost impossible to do anything on some days. I fully intend on pushing myself as long as I don't totally hurt myself.

So I started this 30 day crunch challenge 15 days ago. Let me it hasn't been easy at all! There has been a few days I wanted to throw the towel in and say screw it! I intend to use this blog to not only to motivate me, but to share my story of how I am doing with the struggles of having chiari malformation 1. I would like to raise awareness for this disease while I am at it.

  Here is the challenge, I am at day 15, I did my 95 crunches and I did 20 minutes on my stationary bike.

I hope I keep some of you interested and motivate you to trying this too. I will not lie this is one of the hardest things I have done in along time( well maybe sometimes it's very hard just to get out of bed).