I admit I have struggled these last couple weeks; I have been dealing with a lot of emotional stuff, and while I wouldn’t call myself a stress eater at all, I could have done better than I have. Consequently, my weight is up, and with it, water retention.
I swear, water retention is my body’s way of punishing me. If I have too many carbs, those glycogen stores refill, and along with that comes excess water. For someone like me, with a lot of arthritis, water retention means pain. And pain, added in with emotional stress, puts my head in a bad place. I need to work through this, I know.
I admit that as I’ve seen the scale climb this past week, my head has started the old litany of why bother to diet? And I know, logically, that makes zero sense. Quitting when you’ve lost nearly 56 pounds, because you’re struggling for a few days, is the equivalent of turning a lit match into a forest fire. All I do by subverting my own efforts is create more pain for myself.
And that, I don’t need. I’ve made changes in my life, recently, to lessen my stress level; they’ve been good changes. Yes, there’s still stress; this past week, I’ve cared for a loved one after (minor) surgery, and one of my brothers is facing a challenge that will ultimately end his life far earlier than should ever be. I’ve struggled with grief, even though he’s still with us.
Yet, at the same time, my brother’s struggles are an inspiration to me. Just over a week ago, he had a tumor removed from his spine, and underwent a process to fortify his spine; screws, pins… the medical jargon is beyond me. The result is that he has to retrain his neural pathways to learn to walk, again. Metastasis from prostate cancer has also affected other regions of his spine, and he has hard decisions ahead of him about how he’ll handle the future; he has quality of life decisions to make for his remaining time with us. Will he be happy? Or simply a medical pincushion?
Regardless, he gets up every morning in rehab, leaves a wheelchair behind, and works on retraining his legs. Hopefully, perhaps this week, he’ll be home again. One small step at a time, he works on a goal in front of him — and he freely admits that despite everything on his plate, he is a happy man. He chooses to be a happy man.
Though he knows his time is short, he pushes forward and sets to accomplish what he can, anyway.
Who am I, without any such challenges, to even entertain the thought of not working hard to attain my own goals?
I have only a small setback. I have water retention and a few extra pounds to lose; this fluctuation has happened to me many a time in the past. It’s the nature of how my body works. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing to obsess about, or even fear. I am not in a race against the clock. And this, I can do, without any sort of help or intervention. A small thing, really.
Sometimes, this battle is about keeping things in perspective — and not letting emotion drive you into a more stressful situation by making bad choices.
So with that, I’m resetting my goals to get my head back into the right place, to fully enjoy my moments of goodness, and to keep things in perspective. As long as I keep up the good fight, I will reach my goals; and while those goals carry their own complexities, they are, in essence, quite simple when compared with all the other challenges that we, as humans, might face.
While my brother continues to take one small step at a time toward his goals, so will I.
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On a related note, September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Please ask the men in your life to get checked. My brother, who was diagnosed in 2005 and has been stage 4 since 2007, started feeling symptoms just a few months ago — long after the cancer metastasized to his liver and bones.
Caught early, prostate cancer can be beat, but so many of us convince ourselves that ugly diseases show symptoms, which isn’t always true. It is also not necessarily a disease of the aged. My brother turned 60 last month, and was 51 when he was diagnosed.