One Dollar

I don’t know if anyone saw this in the NYT.  An interesting take on food but it is NOT a diet – rather, more like how millions of people in the world have to eat on a daily basis.  It makes me feel like a glutton even ON a food plan, WOW!

http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/
One of the folks is a graduate from a humane education school non-profit I used to work for many years ago http://humaneeducation.org/.  I really LOVE the message – just not quite able to live up to all of that, in this lifetime anyway:-)

What I Did This Fall

1)  I did not join online WW – yet.
2)  My husband and I gleefully went into debt and bought a house.  See pics below.
3)  My mother went back into the hospital and then back out again.
4)  I ate a lot of crap I shouldn’t have.
5)  I quit my art class because I didn’t like the teacher, but I think I still got my $40.00 worth of instruction.
6)  They canceled the cupcake making class, but considering #4, that is probably a good thing.
7)  I have managed to erase some weird karma in my life my life by forcing myself to not believe the first negative thing that pops into my head about what OTHER may or may not people think of me and just use the ‘wait and see’ approach.  Which brings me to…
8)  I have made some nice friends at work which has not happened in a long time:-)
9)  I still am not exercising:-(
10) I desperately need new pants – again.  What is it with the pants at Fashion Bug all falling apart at the crotch in a mere 4 months??  WTF!?

The Way Back

I think I am going to do the online WW – I have never tried the online version but I think I had more success at least being honest with myself about what I was eating and how much when I using the WW system.  Then I could still enjoy cooking and eating rather than trying something more drastic – some of the ideas rolling thru my head right now feel like rantings of a madwoman; fasting? breatharian? WLS? Atkins-but only eat lean meats?  Nothing really works but eating less and moving more.  If my only problem was ‘feeling satisfied’ I would have lost weight a long time ago.
More on my re-adventure in WW after I sign up again.  I think I can get 1 week free from my insurance company and then go from there.  Unless they have me fill out some big long Q&A and then take months to get back to me.  I want to sign up again this weekend.  I had a bunch of OT and could use some of it to do that.  I also have to buy 2 new tires…for some reason doing those two things on the same day sounds funny.

Huh, there must be something in the air because I just visited AFG and a bunch of people are thinking of recommitting to the WW way of life too! Cool!

Madame Butterfly

-this post has nothing to do with weight loss-

At least I think that was the opera my well-meaning ‘have to get her cultured’ parents took me to…twice.
I remember it took Madame a few more songs to actually finally pass on to the great unknown.
My mother almost died, again, this Saturday.  My father called to tell me that her heart & blood pressure were slowing down and her kidneys had stopped working.  My first thought was ’septic’ my second ’she is going to die before I can get there to say goodbye’.
We flew out of the house but the drive up to the hospital was the longest 2 hours of my life.  I just kept pleading to whomever to just let me be able to tell her I loved her one more time before she died.  I was afraid to call my father on the phone – fearing he would tell me she was gone already.
My heart was in my throat as I ran up to the hospital…while waiting for the elevator I kept hitting the button ‘down, down, down’.  When I got to the ICU I walked right past my father – didn’t even see him – and went to the nurses desk.  A few moments later he poked his head out and I could tell by the look on his face that the ‘worst possible thing’ had not happened.
He told me in the 2 hours since we had spoken she was starting to ‘turn around a tiny bit’ – still in critical condition but a bit of activity in her kidneys and her blood pressure going up encouraged them a tiny bit that she might be able to fight the infection.  My father had to convince her to put the C-PAP mask on.  I guess when he explained to here that it was the mask, intubation or death she chose the mask.  I did say she was stubborn didn’t I – even a hairs breath away from dying and she is fighting what is best for her – unbelievable.  They put her on 5 different antibiotics and waited.  It took her a full 12 hours to produce 25ccs of urine.
By Sunday morning they had tentatively upgraded her to ‘guarded’ -  by Monday afternoon all they were waiting for were her blood gasses to normalize.
I talked to her today and she still sounds very sleepy and out of it.  I expect she has a ways to go before she seems like herself.
I think she would appreciate the analogy to Madame Butterfly being a the serious opera buff that she is, it is not meant to be cruel on my part – but, she has ‘almost’ died 3 times now.  I think I expect she will just keep rallying back over and over again and then someday she won’t be able to and then it will come as a big shock.  My grandmother (father’s mother) was like that – lived through 2 husbands, double mastectomy, 3 heart attacks, 2 strokes and cancer and she was still going.  When she finally died I just didn’t believe it – I couldn’t believe it, I thought she would come back just like she always had.

The Apple

Around Thanksgiving of last year my mother was in the hospital for a variety of complications.  She was sent to rehab after her hospital stay and came home sometime after Christmas.  I think that was her second hospital stay that year.  About a month or so after my 42nd birthday she started saying how she didn’t want me to “end up like her”.  I bristled, I felt a mite haughty and righteous – my first thought being “well, I’m not an alcoholic like you are mommy dearest, I would never be able to drink enough to get myself into this kind of situation in the first place!”  I can’t blame all of her problems on her drinking, in truth it has just aggravated her other more pressing problems.
Still…I keep hearing what she said reverb over and over in my head.  I think about my poor husband having to truck me around in an extra wide wheelchair, or wipe my enormous behind when I can no longer reach around and do it myself – or when the self cleaning toilet breaks (like it did last week at my parents house and all hell-and mothers bowels-broke loose).  I don’t want to put that burden on him and it could happen.   Since I have started my extremely sedentary job I have had ALOT of trouble with water retention in my lower legs.  I started wondering if it was CHF – mainly because I worked in a doctors long enough to think I have symptoms of just about any disease out there.  My  mother also has a lot of trouble with water retention- she is pretty much stuck in a chair all day and she’s too big and weak at this point to get much real “exercise”.   My husband dutifully does gua sha on my feet and legs nearly every day.  It gives me some relief and helps move the water up towards my heart and flush it out.  He is very sweet to do that for me but…..it is becoming a pattern and that worries me.
My mother is an alcoholic who drinks hard liquor until she gets the dry heaves and has to be taken to the ER for a shot to make it stop.  This last trip up I witnessed her “sneaking” wine all day.  She even blatantly asked me to “get the vodka”  down from wherever my father hid it.  I saw where it was and then told her I couldn’t reach it (I lied).  She and my father started arguing.  I told her I did not want to be in the middle of that or be the one to give it to her and walked out of the room.  Yeah for me???   3 hours later the vodka was on the counter.  I looked at my father and he just shrugged and threw up his hands “what am I supposed to do, deal with her bitching all day”??  Did he give in out of wanting not to be the bad guy or wanting to shut her up?  Do you think it is actually some misguided attempt to make her feel better by giving her the very thing that is partially to blame for making her so sick??
When I am having a bad day or have been quarrelsome with my husband he will sometimes leave and come back with some food item he knows I would want.  He wants to soothe me, to help me feel better – even though he knows he shouldn’t bring that food item he still does it.  It is a pattern and it worries me even though  I know for a fact he does it out of love.

Today my mother was admitted into the hospital again and my emotions are all over the place.  The emotion I am finding most curious is anger.  I feel angry at my mother right now and she is lying in the ICU totally out of it.  She could barely talk to me when I called her to tell her I loved her and that I was sorry to hear about her being in the hospital.  All she said was “don’t come unless I am better” and “did you tell dad I am in the ICU” – “ok” and “yes”.  Love you Mom, bye.
I think I sound a bit angry.  I guess I am.  On my last my visit home she was so happy she had gotten her new wheelchair.  It was custom fit for her short and wide body, it had a hydraulic lift so she could be in the chair and it would tip her back.  It took the pressure off the back of her legs and she was comfortable….but, it was too wide and the people that made it put handle bars on the back of the chair.  She took out (aka “crashed into”) a few more drawers and another wall before she realized she could not be in that chair and do any of the tasks she normally did.  She felt totally useless and even more stuck.  She waited 6 months for this chair thinking….as we all did, that “IT” would be answer to so many problems and it turned out to be a $6,000.00 mistake of epic proportions.  She will probably never get in it again if it means she is not going to be allowed to go anywhere in the house with it.

Why am I writing about this on my “weight issues blog”?  Because I am scared I will end up just like her.

In my youth I abhorred her – I hated everything about her and did my upmost to make sure I was never like her.   Now in my 40’s I love her for who she was and is but I am terrified of the thought that I could end up like her.  That part of my brain that likes to tell me ‘go ahead, have another piece’ is also that same voice that said ‘pffffttt, I don’t drink enough to end up like you’.   No, I don’t – but I DO eat.  I have seen enough episodes of “Big Medicine” and “Brookhaven Obesity Clinic” to know you do not have to be an alcoholic to end up in a wheelchair.  All I have to do is eat myself to death and I too could have a supersized wheelchair.

I have made way to many “start agains” pledges both on this blog – my old blog – my entire life to say anything of the sort ever again.

I love and cherish my mother now and I don’t mind that people think I look like her or have her personality.  I don’t mind being the apple for the most part.  I just wonder with all that I have seen her go through it still must not have hit home in any real sense that I need to get my shit together and get on with it.  Why am I so thick in the head?  Why is that voice that says “pfftttt….it’s OK” so much LOUDER than any other voice?  Laziness?  Apathy?  Sloth?  Aren’t those 3 of the deadly sins????

And I should really ask myself, why when SHE is the one suffering in the hospital I am sitting here writing about MYSELF??

6-04-08

That was the last date I did any accounting for my food in my journal or on-line.  It has been nearly 3 months since I have exercised or paid strict attention to my food and I feel it.  I have gained back every ounce I have lost and am once again stretching the bounds of my fattest of fat clothes.
Several reasons come to mind for my depleted enthusiasm but mostly it was school.  This last class was very hard and very tiring and it took all my energy just to get through it with a respectable grade.
I have been paying attention to my reasons for overeating long enough to know that when I am tired I do not do a very good job of taking care of myself.
I ate out a lot, I bought big bags of candy and lived on that for days at a time rather than a decent meal.  I stopped eating my noontime salad wraps.  I felt like crap but I also had it in my mind that there was no way to get through the class – where I felt I was giving my all – and stay on some kind of a ‘food plan’.
But here is the ironic(?) part.  I did all of this schooling to get into an Applied Science Degree program at a local community college only to find out in the 11th hour that they had dropped the program.  That’s right.  1 1/2 years of preparation to enter this program and phhhhfffftttttt.  Gone and nothing even close to it to replace it with unless I want to go 3 hours north twice a week and pay 3 times as much.
This gave me pause to say the least and after a few days of being bummed out….I started getting more sleep, I had more energy, I was feeling lighter, I wasn’t grumpy all the time….hmmmm.
I think at this point I don’t care if I ever step foot into a classroom again unless it is to take a fun class like “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” or “Making Sushi at Home” (yes, I signed up for both of those for this fall!)
And now comes the awful truth, I have no excuses…I have no ‘ifs, ands or buts’ to put forth as ‘reasons’ for not losing weight and getting more exercise and taking better care of myself.
I don’t have much in the way of stress right now.  I have backed away from seeing my parents so much and they have had to learn to cope with getting the people they need to get things done rather than ‘holding on’ until I could get there.  I was having a hard time at work with a very gruff boss who softened her approach to me once I had a heart to heart with her about it.  My marriage is really good and we will be buying a house soon.
So far this week it has been VERY hard to get up in the morning and get on the treadmill – so far I’ve only managed it once.  I have been putting in some overtime so I attribute my unwillingness to get out of bed at 5:30AM to that.  The overtime will be short-lived so I think as long as we keep setting the time for 5:30 eventually we will be able to hop right out of bed the way we used to and do our 30 minutes.
As for the food – I have cut back this week and I already feel better and I am sleeping better.
Two other things I have been doing for the last couple months is taking SAMe in the  morning and Melatonin at night.  I think they have helped just enough that I am actually in a good mood most days – I am not sure if this is soley because of the SAMe /Melatonin or because I am no longer sweating over math and chemistry…all I know is that it feels good to feel happy for a change that is all I can say!!
Could genuine happiness be the key to weight loss??  We’ll find out….

Stolen Dowries in India

As an aside, I also watched a documentary about women in India who are abandoned once the husband has her dowry – up to 30,000 women are abandoned each YEAR in this manner.  The worst part to me is not so much the loss of the money or material goods (though many times it has been a struggle for the brides family to come up with a sufficient enough dowry) but the way in which an abandoned or divorced woman is perceived in India.  There is an excellent post related to this growing problem here.
Again it is a case of women being used as nothing more than a means to an end that has nothing at all to do with the actual woman involved though this is NOT a cultural ritual and I totally wish I was a lawyer so I could go over there and help some of these women.
TOTAL ASIDE:  I found it a bit funny that I saw both of these movies on the eve of my own 5 year annivesary and it made me feel even more grateful to live in a country where I can choose who I want to marry…and I feel grateful I am with someone who loves me for who I am!

The Hima Tribe of Uganda

I saw a documentary late one sleepless night the ION channel called “Fat Fiancees”.  I was curious and had some thought that this was either going to poke fun at fat brides aka: “Bridezilla PLUS SIZE” or turn out to be in favor of a positive body image.  It was neither and I am just not sure how I feel about it.  Having a background in Anthropology I know it is totally unfair to judge another cultures practices so lets just leave my opinion as “I felt sympathy for the girl”
The film was about the Hima Tribe of Uganda who encourage a bride to gain as much weight as possible before a wedding.  So much so that they send her to what is called a ‘fattening hut’ for four months where she drinks whole milk virtually non-stop and is checked periodically for positive signs of weight gain…like stretch marks:

“In Hima society, offering a chubby daughter for marriage is a sign of prosperity, wealth… in short, a fat daughter accords high status to her father…(sic)…While Sheila was off being fattened up, viewers were treated to interviews with the men of the family about the value of a fat woman. Her father observed that, just as with fat cattle, a man can’t find anything bad to say about a large woman.

There is an excellent blog post here about the whole film and additional information researched by the blogger “Lost in Somehwhereistan”.
This ia a radically different approach to what we in America think (or are told?) marriage and beauty is all about.  In this case the fattening really seems to be more about honoring the father and the allure of eventual success and prosperity for the husband than about actual love or compatibility.  In truth, the women of this culture are often described in ways that make them indistinguishable from the cows.

I know many cultures still have such time honored traditions and it is not for me to say what it right or wrong.   We have our own rituals in this country and the blogger made some wonderful comparisons to our modern day ’spend & starve’ approach to weddings (if you read those sorts of magazines…I don’t…I was a fat bride!)
I laughed out loud when Moses said he would be “really, really happy” if Sheila gained 200 pounds!!  Can you imagine!
However, all that PC crapola aside….It was not a stretch for me to feel that this particular ritual was just as bad as expecting women to be a size zero for no more vapid a reason then to look good dangling off of some guys arm or to fit in some ridiculously overpriced pair of jeans.

I have to say I was encouraged to read this in Lost in Somewhereistan’s blog:

“Sheila’s future sister-in-law observed in an interview that she hoped that Sheila wouldn’t gain too much weight. She herself had grown quite large, to the point where she had difficulty rising and walking. She noted that, in addition to the physical handicaps imposed by her size, people were more savvy now about the health risks associated with such dramatic and rapid weight gain. She was considered beautiful and had been a very desirable bride, but paid the price with her health and mobility.“

I wonder if at one point in time in the history of this tribe there was famine and death and to have fat bride ensured fertility?  Rituals often come about as a way to explain or control something that we do not understand or wish to change, it does make wonder.

Still Here…sorta

I’ve been living with a chemistry book glued to my face for the last month and so far have racked up an 88% average (that’s a B).

And I’ve lost…

I’ve lost all interest in getting up early to exercise due to the fact that I stay up late to study 4 nights a week.

I have also found that I am eating out the two nights I am at class and that has become something I look forward to because  it is usually junk food.

I have lost the ability to get a decent nights sleep due to the studying screwing up my sleeping schedule.

I think the lack of sleep has something to do with the crap food I’ve been eating since about a week into the class.

And I’ve learned…

I really MUST HAVE a good nights sleep and I really NEED exercise.  Without those two things, well…how far can I get on salt, grease, no sleep and caffeine???  I can see that the things I have lost (ability to take care of myself) in favor of a good grade in Chemistry is not sustainable.  Granted this is a compressed class (1 year of Chemistry in 8 weeks… how about we call that “Crazy Compressed”!!) and things won’t be quite so bad in a normal classroom, still, I need to get a grip.  This is not good and I feel yucky.

*sigh*

I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do about it…yet.  This crazy crash course will be over in about 3 1/2 weeks and then I can catch my breath.  Until then, the least I can do is stop the ‘junk food’ two nights a week and exercise on the weekends at least.  That is something.

Yup, still riding the ragged edge of Fatdom

Not much has changed since my last post.  I have tried to stay on the diabetic diet-ish thing but it is touch and go.  The only thing I have been able to commit to on a regular basis is the exercise, averaging about 4 times a week at 25 – 30 minutes a time.  I get my fiber, take my vitamins, calcium and fish oil and try to get a good nights sleep and stay away from coffee.  Other than that, things are the same, my weight is unchanged.
They are having a “Biggest Loser” contest at work and this rather thinnish guy who I used to talk to where I was ‘cubed’ before came waltzing over to me with this weird grin on his face and tells me proudly that he “made the board”.  I had no clue what he was talking about.  When he told me I was all “uhh…not like you had that much to lose in the first place”.  My “someone is about to make a personal comment about my weight” alarm went off and I just gave the “who cares” shrug and implored him (silently) to keep his barely-an-inch-to-pinch yap shut.  I mean really, why on EARTH would I  tell one of those bonehead managers of mine what MY weight is???  Are you kidding me?  Do I LOOK stupid?  I can just imagine the convo’s about that!  I would, however, make them all look good in a line up.
We did find a new place to go hiking and we hope to be going to check it out soon.  There is one place nearby that has some trails but it is not challenging (well, except for trying to outwalk the blackflies).
It is hard to find the time on the weekends when I am gone to my parents nearly every two weeks and trying to get other stuff done the other weekends I’m home.  Due to the gas prices I have cut my trips home to every 3 weeks.
We are looking at a piece of property next week.  It has a trailer on it right now but we would want to exchange that for a custom modular at some point in the next 5 years.  There are few things I have longed for (well, excepting food of course) but having a home to call our own has been very important to me the last couple of years.  I think I feel like I will finally feel totally safe and secure.  I’ve explored that some and I know one reason I am craving that is because of the instability in my formative years and even as an adult moving a lot and going from job to job.  I don’t want that life ever again.
One other fabulous thing…..I passed my Intro to Algebra placement test, 102 out of 119!  School is a definite go and I am well on my way to overcoming the monster that is ALGEBRA!!!