Yikes

Yes, I realize the last time I posted was Tuesday, but this week bowled on past like a cannonball. A lot of things happened this week and I needed to take some time to wrap my brain around them before I could write.

The importance of a healthy lifestyle really hit home on Wednesday. I received a call from my mom who told me my dad had a stroke. Now, let me backtrack, my dad had a heart attack at the end of August and spent 4 days in the hospital. The damage to his heart was not that extensive and he had a stint put in one of his arteries. Now, I never in a million years thought my father would have a heart attack. To me, he always appeared to be in decent shape. He was not overweight. He ate relatively healthy (a little snacking from time to time, but nothing too awful). And he was pretty active. What did him in was smoking. My dad has smoked since he was about 19 years old and he is now 63. All those years of smoking caused plaque build up in his arteries, which led to the heart attack. Well, my dad quit smoking, began taking different medications to help prevent another heart attack, and began changing his diet. So now he has a stroke. Fortunately, the damage does not appear to be as bad as we first thought. He has some paralysis on his left side and his speech is slurred, but he is able to talk, eat, and his cognition appears to be normal. He will be moving to the rehab. floor in the hospital this weekend and will begin occupational, physical, and speech therapy on Monday.

So, although I am worried about him, I truly believe he will be alright and will be somewhat back to his old self in a few months. Once the dust settled and I worked through all of my emotions regarding my dad's stroke, I really began to think about how important a healthy lifestyle really is. I also began to think about how I really haven't been taking the weight loss and changing my habits seriously. On Tuesday I wrote about how I was going to write out a plan for my weekend before it happened so that I could go out with friends and not blow it. Well, I didn't exactly do that yesterday. Not to say that I pigged out and ate things I really shouldn't have, but I did eat out for lunch and dinner (not always the best thing to do). On the plus side, I wasn't really hungry when I went out to eat so I did not eat the entire portion and I really tried to think about what I was going to order. I just don't know what is wrong with me. It's like there is this part of me that does not want to make any changes. A part of me likes where I am and does not want to leave the comfort zone and, unfortunately, that has been the part that I have been listening to lately. As a therapist I know that you can't make other people change if they don't want to. I also know that you have to become really uncomfortable in your current situation in order to leave the comfort zone. I do not want to have health problems as I get older. I want to be an active person and I hope to be hiking and biking when I'm in my 80s. I know, in order to do this, I have to drop the weight I've been dragging around with me for the past 26 years. So it is time to get all of the parts of me together and focused on a common goal. I am not happy and I'm not really comfortable where I am, so it is time to change.

Aside from eating a stromboli for dinner (skipped afternoon snack, very bad), that's the only really bad thing I ate yesterday. I've managed to stay away from the candy this week, which is a big win because I wanted to eat either a pint of ice cream or an entire big bag of M&Ms when I heard about my dad. :)