Entry 18 - Ambivalent, but Making an Effort

I joined weight watchers. More to come.


ETA: Dropped five pounds this week. Cautious optimism.

Entry 17 - Don't worry, I do have a point. Kinda.

I didn't mean this to be a fibro blog. I meant it to be a "FAT!" blog. I'll get to the point in a minute.

What follows is not an exercise in griping, but an exercise in observation.

Last night, I realized that just sitting still on the couch having dinner, I could identify multiple points of pain all over my body, and other just odd little hobs and nobs that struck my senses.

So sitting here right now, I'm going to just do a quick inventory, head to toe:
• I feel light headed.
• I feel like a lightly-applied vice is pushing in, just above my
cheekbones, with more pressure on the left side.
• I feel sinus drainage down the back of my throat.
• My throat feels like it's clenched tight.
• My right cheek is burning.
• My jaw joints are throbbing.
• My ears are ringing.
• My mouth is dry (probably the medication)
• My neck is stiff.
• A pain actually just shot up the back right side of my neck to the
base of my skull, and now feels tight.
• The right side of my neck has a baseball-sized ball of hot tight
pain right where it meets the shoulder.
• The tips of my shoulders hurt.
• My collarbones hurt.
• The bottom of my left shoulder blade is throbbing.
• My fingers are numb and tingly.
• I swear, my boobs hurt.
• My sternum feels tight.
• My elbows don't want to move.
• I have weird patches of pain in my forearms.
• My palms are alternating between tingly and hot.
• My fingers hare a dull ache, except the knuckles, which throb.
• My fingertips are burning.
• The spine at my center back just feels like a blister or
something – it only feels fiery when I move it against the back
of my chair.
• I think my ribs themselves are hurting. I'm regretting wearing
pants, I should have worn a dress with no waistband.
• My stomach feels pukey.
• My lower abdomen has little balls of crampy pain in various places.
• My left hip is throbbing and tender to the touch.
• Oh who am I kidding? Lots of weird places on me are tender to the touch.
• The pain from my hip seems to leech down to my left knee, where it
rests like a railroad spike at the knee cap.
• The inside of my right knee feels like a black of wood.
• I can't cross my legs, or I end up with massive inner thigh cramps.
• There's a soft-ball sized knot, just the feeling of a hot hard ball,
in my right calf.
• My feet are tingly, and the balls are throbbing.
• My arches are just kind of … tightened? Like they don't want to be left out?
• Oh, and above my right ankle, it's started to cramp. Lovely.

And I'm really not trying to complain because, well, it pretty much feels like this all the time. So you just kind of get used to it, ya know? I mean, I'm not happy, I'm not comfortable, I certainly want to treat it, but this has just become a daily thing since I've been off the NSAIDs, so I am still adjusting, but meh.

Anyway, on to the weight loss portion of the show.

I've been doing 20 minutes on the exercise bike every morning to try to help keep things managed. It sucks. I get up at 5 am to do it, before the rest of the family's awake, and to try to get my blood moving for the day. The only thing that keeps me doing it is I feel way better throughout the day if I can keep it up. I've been slacking off on weekends, which means I've been feeling shittier on weekends than weekdays. I need to suck it up and continue on the weekends, because right now, all I'm doing is sleeping and whining through my time with my family.

So at work, they're doing a health challenge – put in 400 minutes of exercise in the month of October. I got that nailed as long as I report my exercise bike time, so why not?

Then, they're bringing weight watchers in house because there was enough interest. So I'm signing up. I'm sure there's a gluten-free program I can follow.

So we'll see what happens. Pain control plus some weight loss? If I'm going to be doing the exercise anyway, maybe I can finally make it worth more.

Plus, if I lose 30 pounds, I intend to wear this awesome, amazing, alluring dress to my best friend's wedding. Her dress is very Grecian goddess. I can be her high-ranking slave girl in this rockin' piece o' material!

Entry 16 - How do you get past denial?

I used to be married to an alcoholic. I know all about denial. I'm quite good at it, I spent years swimming happily in it. Or, rather unhappily, but pretending to be happy.

And it occurred to me today as I was mowing through a bag of peanut butter M&M's (the food of the gods, this was the mana that fell on the Israelites) that I'm in denial once again. About my health.

Oh, I talk a good game. I'm overweight, I need to deal with it for my health and to set a good example for my children, I need to cut out caffeine, chocolate, asparatame, etc., to help get my fibromyalgia under control, blah blah blah. But do I live it? No. Because at the end of the day I still don't feel like anything bad is going to happen to me over this rather than having to continually cycle out my wardrobe to larger sizes as I get fatter and fatter.

So what is it with me? How come I can intellectually know something but I can't let it past the Chocolate Chex and into my heart? Is it not that I can't physically give up the food; is it more that I'm eating myself silly because then I can avoid really facing what my brain already knows? Because sometimes the reality of my situation sinks in, and I get sullen and depressed. I'm so pained and so tired, that when I face it, I just curl into a cranky little ball. If I keep eating and deny it, I'm literally "fat and happy."

And I think I must be onto something, because just typing that out, admitting it, is making my heart feel heavy. And not because of all the fat that's probably hanging all over it like Kevin Smith on Stan Lee. (No disrepect at all intended to Mr. Smith or Mr. Lee, I admire them both, it's just the first analogy that popped into my head, which just proves I'm way too pop-culture enamored.)

I don't eat to live. I don't even live to eat. I eat so I don't have to face the reality of life. I eat so I don't have to think about what I am. Because as long as there's a gluten-free, fat-and-sugar-filled lemon shortbread cookie in my hand and a cuppa on my desk, I can be somewhere else in my head. I can also cling to the fact that as long as I'm fat, I can blame all of the bad stuff in my life on my weight, and think it'd all be better if I could just lose weight (I've been thin, though, so I know that's not true). I eat instead of drink because I can feel high and alive and forget everything around me while I concentrate on the pleasure of food (without the drunkenness that pained me so much during my first marriage).

So yeah. I can talk all I want, but I'm not really there yet. And when I start to get there, it's kind of crushing. Which is stupid – I know I have so much, why am I so concerned about not having my health? Or is that part of what's defeating me, that I can't admit things aren't the best they could be despite how much is good? That I can't accept the dichotomy of daily pain with daily joy? That I can be physically and emotionally miserable while still being intellectually stable and "heart" happy? I've been so adamant the last few years that gray areas are acceptable and traversable, have I not really understood that beyond my law practice and the lives of my friends I so happily contribute advice to? Is it I can see the bigger picture with the entire world, but I can't get past tidbits in my own tiny isolated existence?

I'm suddenly not so hungry. M&M's are gone now, though, so that doesn't matter. But suddenly I'm thinking I need to just crawl into my own mind for a while, and see what's actually there.

Entry 15 - My Y's don't always work on this keyboard.

And honestl, the title of this blog is wholly irrelevant to the content, but in case I'm dropping a bunch of y's, I didn't want y'all to think I was an idiot. I think that enough on my own.

So remember when in the last post, I said I had to go off my NSAIDs because of my stomach? Well guess what! Found out I have even more shit wrong with me! Hoooooray!

So a little while off the NSAIDs, I started to feel sore. The more the anti-inflammatories washed outa my body, the more sore I got. Well that's interesting!

Eventuall, I couldn't sleep more than five hours a night, and never in a row (which would have at least helped). Hurt too bad. My neck was a mess. My left knee and hip screamed. My entire lower back burned. If the cat jumped on the wrong spot on my body, he was met with a yelp of pain.

So, I haul my sore ass back to the doc's. He does a tender point test. I almost elbowed him the ribs.

Now we can add* fibromyalgia to my long list! Woo woo!

(*I originally typed this as "ass," dancing around in my Freudian slip again.)

So, he starts me on muscle relaxants for two weeks.

No good.

He moves me to a stronger muscle relaxant and a pain killer.

Liiiiitle better. Had a few solid nights, but still not great.

Aaaaaand, I've periodically been falling asleep during witness prep at work. Which is just charming, isn't it?

Calling him again Monday.

How's the effect my eating? Well, if you recall, I'm a stress eater. This has been stressful.

A good side effect, though? If I don't get my ass up at 5 am and go put in 20 minutes on the exercise bike, I'm toast the rest of the day. So I've been exercising once or twice a day, doing interval training on the exercise bike. And I just bought small handweights to also work on while I'm on the bike.

Helps the muscles deal.

And might have a good side effect at some point, never know.

Also gives me an uninterrupted 20 minutes in the morning to listen to books on tape, which has been nice. Millenium trilogy (which I highly recommend) is done, now on to the Sookie Stackhouse series! She's dumb as a post, but oh so endearing!

Entry 14 - My Luckiest Number, My Suckiest Entry

Yeah, haven't posted for a while.

But I hate my stomach. Hate it hate it hate it.

So, things were going nicely. I was eating all non-processed foods, cooking with fresh veg, etc. I was getting so much energy back during the month of June, and was actually feeling pretty danged good and confident. I'm all over this thing!

Then, Monday June 28 hit.

I'd been feeling a little ouchy in the tummy for about a week. It's come and go in duration and intensity. I rested up the weekend of the 26th, and felt pretty good about work on the 28th.

Part way through the morning, the stomach pain started up. I kept pushing through.

By that afternoon, I was in childbirth-level abdominal pain. I put my head on the desk and breathed through it until I felt well enough to drive myself to the doctor.

He gave me a new proton-pump inhibitor as well as a stomach pain medication, ordered me off my beloved NSAIDs and muscle relaxants for my jaw, and ordered an upper GI and a gallbladder ultrasound. (Told me it was scheduled for the 29th, when actually they scheduled me for the 30th, which is just the latest in a long line of incidents, and I really probably should fire that doctor, but whatev.)

I get my results back, what lo and behold – my gallbladder is covered in small cysts ("too small to have much chance of being cancerous, and it's probably not what's causing the pain" – thanks for the encouragement!) and my lower esophageal sphincter (what an unfortunate name) isn't flapping down right. So yeah, GERDy GERDy GERD GERD, my acid reflux is in full swing, and stepped it up a notch.

Cut out more foods. Somewhat unsuccessfully. There's only so much you can cut out, ya know? I've already cut out all gluten, now I'm supposed to give up tomatoes, coffee (ha!), Diet Coke (HAHA!), Red Bull (DOUBLEFREAKINGHAHA), chocolate (Sweet Jebus, no!), orange juice (okay, I'll relent there), etc.?

So whatevs, I've been eating stuff that makes my tummy feel comfy. And I'm back down to no energy. Oh, and since I’m off my NSAIDs, not only does my jaw hurt like hell (but I'm still gonna chew, dammitalltohell), but I discovered the NSAIDs were also preventing pain in my neck, shoulders, hips, ankles, knees, lower back, upper back, and I think even my blinkin' stupid traitorous elbows. So yeah, can't eat a damned thing (well, not supposed to eat a damned thing, it feels like), and activity levels are down, and sleep is crap because I wake up in pain 2 – 3 times a night.

I'm sure I've put weight back on, but I dare not look.

I'm just gonna sit here for a bit and be pissed. Every time I make a bit of progress, I get thwacked with something else. And it's really, really pissing me off.

Entry 13 - For Good Luck and Good Living!

Happened upon an interesting article in the local paper today about a doctor self-treating her MS with diet and exercise. Linky.

What I find very cool is, I'm more or less doing the same thing she is (although I haven't gotten into the exercise portion much yet, but that's more time than desire, which I'll explain below).

I've adopted something similar to her eating habits, although I got my idea from Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live." He recommends eating organic foods in as close to their natural state as possible – aim for one pound of fresh veg a day, one pound of cooked veg, four fruits, one cup of legumes, one ounce of nuts, one tablespoon of flax seed. If you can mash all that down, then you can indulge a bit with other things such as up to one serving of a starch (sweet potato, rice) and maybe even meat twice a week (although it'd better be fish, baby). Fuhrman largely pushes the vegan lifestyle, which makes this former cattle owner, current grill owner, and total steak aficionado a little antsy. The main point is, though, eat extremely nutrient-dense foods. Bypass iceberg lettuce for romaine or fresh spinach. Use germinated quinoa (germination before cooking ups the nutrients) instead of white rice. Yadda yadda.

I love fruit. I kinda like certain veg, fresh and cooked (I've actually found I like just eating romaine lettuce leaves as a snack). It's hard to limit to one ounce of nuts, but I have been. I love me some starchy carbs, but it doesn't necessarily break my heart to give up the majority of 'em. Lovin' the quinoa, and actually I think it tastes a bit better when germinated to little sprouts before cooking. Giving up meat and other animal products, though? Yeah... I'm not doing that. I have two fat free yogurt smoothies a day (the banana in each helps me reach the fruit goal, along with my morning and afternoon apple/pear/orange snacks at work), and I'm eatin' meat with most of my evening meals. Sorry, dude, I have canines with which to rip animal flesh from the bone, I'm usin' 'em.

But you know what? I've lost seven pounds. And that's not even the most exciting part! I come home at night, and I have energy. I'd forgotten what that feels like. I can get my cooking done, play with my son, take care of some house duties, all without wanting to sit down and take a nap! My evenings haven't been like this in years. I'm stunned – a week and a half in (off and on – see what happened last weekend), and I'm lovin' life again!

My stomach's screaming at me a little bit – "Hey, why are you giving me stuff I have to digest, you bitch???" – but it's adjusting. I'm also waking up on the first alarm in the morning rather than smacking snooze. I'm dropping off to sleep quicker. I've randomly been dropping to the floor to do the plank position and push-ups. If I had more time, I'd start doing the Wii Active or my exercise bike again! A few more pounds, I might pull out my elliptical trainer (stupid weight limit on it that I'm still a tad too close to). My sex drive is up (John and I are both liking this part). And – shock and awe – I have no desire to eat the M&M's from the sixth floor vending machine!

Holy crap, is this actually working? I don't wanna be too optimistic, because I always start things out all gung ho then find myself consuming an entire bag of Cheetos Puffcorn in one go, but I'm a little bit excited here! And not just because of the weight, but because … I feel danged good!

I so hope I don't get all self-destructive on myself and blow it all over a candy bar or some crap. DO NOT WANT.

Entry 12 - Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Eggs and Spam

So, I stopped by a Barnes & Noble at a mall yesterday on my way back from dropping off NinaBell with her dad. As I was leaving, there was a car letting someone off by the door, and an SUV filled with college-aged boys behind that. They were stopped, I was at a crosswalk, so I claimed "pedestrian right-of-way" and stepped out. Right at that time, the SUV swung around the parked car and almost hit me.

I just kept walking, when one of the boys in the SUV yelled, "Hey, that lady's made of Spam! I didn't know Spam could move!"

Asshat. C+ for originality, F for execution. Seriously, I've heard far better than that in my life. I need to credit A.S. in high school for the crack about, "The school had to build extra supports structures under your desk so you wouldn't crash through the floor" for one of the best.

But I had a good response - usually, that would have sent me into a bucket o' tears and a bucket o' chicken. But this time my reaction was, "Fuck you, asswipe. I'm going home and having some romaine lettuce, and an apple with peanut butter, cause I can lose weight, but you'll probably ALWAYS be an asshole."

Major breakthrough for me there! Instead of getting sullen, I got angry and motivated.

I had actually fallen off the wagon this weekend, too. I'd eaten peanut butter M&M's (their siren song is strong and pulls me to my doom) cheese tots at Sonic (oh so delish!) and even had a mocha java chiller. I was going to have cheese tots again for lunch. I truly, I need to thank that motherfucker for getting me back on the path.

The last week, I've largely been trying to eat foods in as close to their natural form as possible. I'm cooking my quinoa – would be a bit tough otherwise – and I'm using non-fat, low sugar yogurt in some smoothies, but otherwise, I'm trying to keep things largely fresh and uncooked.

I've lost six pounds.

When I ate the cheese tots after a week of good eating, I felt like crap.

When I completed the drive to drop my daughter off with her dad, I didn't collapse as I usually would. Instead, I got laundry done, and pre-made my breakfasts for the week (for breakfast, quinoa with apples and cinnamon, coconut milk on the side for hot cereal goodness; for lunch, quinoa and mango salad with cranberries, green onions, fresh parsley, and a white wine vinegar dressing). Then I gave the boy a bath, and fell asleep for a good night's rest.

Not too shabby, right? Nutrient-dense, fresh foods are the nom, and I deserve to feel good, so I need to keep eating them.

I deserve to feel good, dammit. And not the temporary chocolate-y "feel good," but actually feel good.