On making a committment

I promised some good news today and I absolutely plan on delivering.  Im down to 179.2 lbs.  From 181.6, or a loss of 2 lbs.  So yay - early indication is that plan get-weight-under-control is working.

This plan?  Its going to take commitment.  Three times a week visiting the diet/nutrition center.  Daily food journaling (at least the journal book they give you is cute).  Planning your food in advance so that you get the right balance of everything in the right serving sizes.  Carrying water. Buying the right food to be able to plan.  Learning what is and isn't part of the plan.  Well, to be fair everything is part of the plan but when you get 1 100 calorie freebie a day, asking yourself if it makes more sense to have a whole snack pack of chocolate covered pretzels or 1 timbit?

Does it help to have had an early success?  Yes.  Does signing a contract to do this thing help?  Sure, as does telling people and making yourself accountable to them.  Will there be bad days where I don't want to do this?  absolutely.

The same thing happens with walking, exercise and fibro.  There are days where moving feels beyond me - so I tell myself to walk to the front lobby.  Its down stairs so then it feels hard to choose to walk back up, so I walk to the end of the block.  Now theres a hill behind me to go back home, so I walk down to the main street, and so on and so forth until I've walked to the bus depot to get to school. 

Losing weight is going to mean making myself have a system like that - where I take one baby step at a time.

Today's baby step was learning an important lesson in flexibility.  Surprise - grocery day was now moved to this morning.  Ok, I can roll with that - lets just stop at the diet center on the way.  Go out, do groceries, Jussi is starving and doesn't want to wait for food.  So I checked what I had said I was going to have for lunch (a starch, a protein, a veggie serving, a fat), calculated who made something that would fit into those rules and off we went to Pita Pit.  It wasn't the meal I had planned out, and it was the burger we would have normally gotten but it did work.

Take life one victory at a time.

Transitioning meds

This, I prewarn you, I is a fibro-centric post.

I'm in the process of switching the med that has given me the most relief from my fibro.  Why?  Mostly because I'm pretty sure my doctor is an idiot.  But to get to what I think is going to work, first we have to try her way.

Understand, normally, I do think doctors do have a skill and knowledge base that comes from studying the stuff for a long time and that they may possess information we have considered or have access to.  I'm not saying that we need to follow the advice blindly, just that we need not write it off immediately for not being the answer we think is right.

But, when I went to her reporting an increase of fibro symptoms, daily headaches, and a whole host of 'clearly this needs dealing with' things her first response was to increase my SSRI (Lexapro, escitaopram, celexa pick you name, this thing has so many).  Ok, this wasn't the answer I was hoping for but lets try it.  If a little works, more should work better, I get this logic.

Now granted, I have information, that while in my file, she likely hadn't considered.  When I first went on the SSRI (not for fibro at the time), I went through 3 nights in hospital, many many tests to come up with what exactly was causing my depression/insomnia/anxiety triad and what could be done for it.  Welcome to the world of Canadian mental health research.  It was actually one of the best things I could have done for myself.  The end result was that they knew before I started the meds what med was best for me and that I would likely only need a low dose - but for the rest of my life.  I was missing some brain waves, getting 7 mins sleep a night and basically that messed up my brain chemistry.

Ok, so despite this information (which I pointed out to dear dr.), lets up the dose.  Tried that this summer, got vertigo as soon as I tried.  OK, lets go slower on that increase.  Nope, still can't tolerate it.

Which led us to where I am today.  After completely tapering off that med (wait, what?  Why?  See previous me thinking my dr is an idiot.  If you cant take more of the med, obviously its the wrong one, lets take it away and see what happens if we put you on an older, less effective SSRI, with way more side effects), I was getting the zaps (SSRI discontinuation syndrome) pretty badly.

Last night I said enough is enough.  I couldn't move without being zapped, and was no longer safe to drive or function like a human being.  I started the new med a few days early as obviously the first drug is out or basically out of my system (it had been 5 days since my last low partial dose) and my brain was not happy.  Oh, and the mood swings had me dancing, crying then angry in the space of one song.

Honestly, I'm already not a fan on this new drug.  Dry mouth, its affected the bowels.  But i'll give it long enough to adjust before I go back in, demanding my medication and a new avenue of trying to control the fibro.

At least from this I have learnt exactly how much the first SSRI was doing for symptom management.  The fibro went wild as the medication came out of my system.  My muscles burn.  Badly and with every step.

Im Back!!! with another step

That's right I haven't stopped moving, a min of 15km walked a week. Usually in 3 5km walks. I think this is vital. But now its time for the next step. Losing some of the excess weight that is also part of the problem. I walked into a local weight loss center. Im going to do this. Tomorrow I get my measurements - I'm not looking forward to this. At least my weight was where I thought it was. Not heavier. Am I ready for this? No Buts lets do it and see if I can get down to goal weight #1 (its about 30 lbs away) for the end of Jan.