hungry/full

They say in north American culture we don't know if we are hungry or full, thirsty or not.  I do sort of agree with this - but not completely.

I know when I am thirsty.  I have felt thirst, the kind that needs water to fix.  Absence of this feeling, to me, is not thirsty.  That being said, the meds I take give me a dry mouth.  So, even though im not thirsty, I drink a ton of water trying to correct this.  Note: it never works, and chewing gum is more effective but not my fav habit. My mouth gets tired of chewing.  It doesn't get tired of sipping water, and since water is free and easily available, I usually just keep a big bottle of it nearby. That being said, I know a lot of people who likely are dehydrated - they don't drink as much water in a day as they lose.  And yes, I know we get water from our foods as well.

Hungry though is a different story for me.  Physical hunger I don't know that I have ever felt - at least not in the way other people describe.  The growling stomach? For me that normally means i'm feeling nauseous.  Putting food in sometimes helps, sometimes makes it worse, but I usually try food anyways.  The gnawing pit?  I've never felt that.

For me, hunger is when I think of food and it sounds tasty.  The more kinds of food that sound tasty, the hungrier I must be.  Chocolate cake sound good? well that's normal, so I must not be hungry.  Bread, peanut butter, eggs, apples, etc etc all sound amazing?  I must be pretty hungry.  Unfortunately, this usually means I eat everything on the 'sounds good' list, plus whatever else I see next to these items in the kitchen that also strikes my fancy.

The downside to this system is that doing things like browsing pinterest can convince me im hungry.  Look at 25 pictures of tasty looking food, recipes you would be interested in trying.  All these things sound noms?  Must be hungry, lets go eat something.

On the flip side of the coin I also know that I don't listen to 'full'.  It takes us 20 mins to know when we are full and in that time, most of us, myself included, just keep eating.  So full becomes uncomfortable, feeling ill and painful because we have eaten too much before the signal arrives to stop eating.

One of the things I am learning is to think before hand how much food is enough and eat till that point.  It usually coincides with full - not with ill.  Im also learning to put food on a schedule, eat a certain number of times a day and that doesn't seem to coincide with hungry but it does mean I never get food ideation - which usually avoids eating ALL THE THINGS.

That being said, there is another kind of hungry.  It is not helped by any system out there that I have found yet.  Emotional hungry.  I feel, therefore I will put food on top of it to not feel.  That is the one I struggle with more often.

But I am looking at the new food system and wondering - could I do this for stress?  could I do this for fibro?  could I use this for something else to manage my life better.  Can I make a plan to avoid the two extremes in any situation (too busy/bored, stressed/bored, etc) and teach myself balance?

It sounds like a great idea.  I just don't know what the action plan would be.  I need someone to teach me balance.  I need a life coach ;)

Ill end with more good news.  I'm down another 2 lbs total this week.  I am also close to saying goodbye to the 170's.  Squee!

Fighting

Most relationships don't end, in my experience, over huge issues.  The problems are not - usually - over cheating, or any of those catastrophic events people hear about.  In my experience, they end over whose turn it is to do the dishes and the importance of saying thanks.

They end because someone stops feeling loved, appreciated and like the relationship has meaning or value anymore.

If you want to hurt me, break your word to me.  And do so for no real reason, not because something happened but because nothing did.  I can forgive you sleeping with someone else.  I can't forgive the 10th time you 'forgot' something you said you would do, the 16th time you ignored me or the 30th time you choose to play your xbox in the middle of a fairly important, are-we-going-to-make-it discussion with me.

I have a busy life - I have 3 jobs. 120% course load.  community involvement commitments.  an active social life.  a disease that steals my health, energy and patience.  I don't have time, or the desire, to pour my energies into something that is not returned, to not be valued.

I don't have time for passive-aggressive bullshit.

Look at the people in your life.  Are you treating them the way they want to be treated?  are you taking the time to honor and respect them, to listen, to be a friend?  Have you reached out recently to find out what's going on?  There are people in your life right now for whom a few mins of your time, a hand to wash the dishes, a shared meal, would mean a lot.  Even a phone call helps.

Who are you going to be in the world?  How are you going to treat people?  Choose wisely, because, as the meme says, a good woman can be lost.

STRESS!!! And a win

This has been a long week for me.  I look something like this:

 

Its been a bad week.  The kind of week that involves multiple days of tears, the admission that I think its time to find a new job and the occasional discussion about why I should or should not put mass amounts of food on top of my feelings in order to keep them under control.

 

 

The good news is that I mostly won the battle against food vs feelings.  I didn't eat a ton too much, i did eat some.

 

 

The bad news is the stress screwed up the fibro largely - a lot of hip and back pain, the loss of the ability to reach the floor again (ugh, I hate that one!) and generally feeling crappy which never helps the situation any.

 

 

The good news - someone I know just had 5 kitties arrive at her door.  The cuteness im picturing in my head just made everything else i was thinking of disappear

 

 

The bad news - the rest of this post may have just been chased out by thoughts of kitty cats.

 

 

The good news - I lost 10 lbs in total.  Today I got to move my little marker to the next wall and do a happy dance.

 

 

The bad news - i'm feeling like if I hadn't put a chocolate cupcake and a few other slips on top of my emotions, that would have been better

 

 The good news - the center is paying me 10$/lb lost this weekend as an incentive to stay on track despite turkey and maybe even lose.  Ill take it.

 

 

Actually, that may be enough rambling for today.  I'm thinking about kitties now.  I want kitties - especially since we have a great foster program up here where everything is provided and all you do is love them.  I can't though as I'm allergic.

My old friend prednisone

 

When I was first diagnosed with fibro it was because of prednisone.  I had taken a 5 day, high dose course because a virus had given me sad, painful, hard to breathe asthma lungs.  Taking this medication, I felt normal for the first time in ten years - no exhausted all the time, decreased pain.  So I took the prescription in and asked the doctor to explain me why and how this happened.  She finally figured out what had been going on with my body the whole time and started me on the path to where I am today.

I end up on this drug every year or so, usually because of asthma lungs.  Once because of a really good allergic reaction to some kind of mutant mosquitos we had up here.  And, although the side effects are not the greatest (insomnia anyone?), its one of the more fun drugs to be on as I get a few days of normalcy and really catch up on things in my life.

Friday, while still battling the head cold-from-hell, I woke up with the sad painful lungs.  And proceeded to tell myself all day I was fine and didn't need to do anything about this.  Just ignore the fact its hard to breathe, oxygen is no longer necessary.  After fighting through my shift at work, I gave in and went to a surprisingly quiet, you-are-next-in-line, walk in clinic. (Clinics here have a 2-4 hour wait normally...if the doctor even shows up).  The doctor walked in. 

"That was you I heard in the waiting room?"

Yes.....

"How long have you had asthma?"

Oh, crud.  Ok, I know where this is going, since the next question was did I feel like I needed prednisone?  And by the time I made it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist asked if I want the meds, or the ER.  Yea, I guess the sad lung sound was a little prominent.

So I get a course of meds.  To be honest, 36 hours in, its not working as well as I might hope.  I may have to go back to the clinic tomorrow.  Not sure yet.  But this does mean its not likely I'll be losing much weight this week - prednisone is noted for this.

However, if I'm going to be awake all night, I plan on finding new recipes on pinterest tonight.  I made a great couscous for dinner, with lots of veggies, salad and a half a rainbow trout.  It turned out delicious and I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch.

Lucky number 7

Today I went to the weight loss center.  Officially, with them, my weeks end on a Monday and that's where they tell you how much weight you have lost that week and in total, etc.  I don't love ending on a Monday, it feels very awkward for me.   And since you weigh every time you go in (to, amongst other things, check for water balance and make sure you aren't eating too much sodium), I am picking my Friday weight as my week end in my mind.  And, this Friday, I had officially lost 7 lbs.  Which is awesome.

This journey isn't all about number though.  Its about health - and as much as I would like to celebrate healthy, this week has not been a healthy one for me.  I have been battling the head cold on steroids someone kindly donated to me.  Yesterday, while trying to do my walk to the bus depot and back, I was seriously struggling - a) to even complete it (it took me twice as long as usual) and b) to breathe.  So some nice strong inhalers are back in my life until I can breathe without pain and this week is about being gentle to my body, giving it rest and nutritious foods.

This journey is about support.  I cannot do it completely alone - I need to be able to talk about my wins, my losses, and my struggles and I need to be able to dialogue about how to make new choices.  In terms of the center I go to, they are great.  Today I stayed and chatted with my favorite woman there about food, how to eat out and not go too far off track, about what do to do avoid sick germs and what how to take care of my body when I am sick.  We share tips for cooking, preserving healthy foods and ways to add flavour into recipes without too many calories or fat.  I learn from her, and she is learning from me as well (I already have her making her own frozen veggies).  We chatted long enough the next client had already come in and was waiting...oops.

This blog is part of my dialogue.  It is a way for me to record my thoughts, and see where I have been and where I am going.  It lets me look back along the way, and talk, safely, without getting too off topic to everyone at once - and maybe even to reach out to others as well who might be in a similar place in life.  I welcome your comments - interact with me, challenge me, dialogue with me.  Making change, truly making change, means changing not only my way of thinking, but who I am socially as well, and I know this is going to mean changing how I interact with people in some regards - especially around food choices, activities and events.  So welcome to my journey, please have patience with me.  I am simply a woman in the process of becoming who I want to be.

Blame your friends.

No - not really.  I don't actually blame my friends, family or anyone in my life.  But I remember, over a year ago, reading some interesting research that if your friends were overweight, you were more likely to be overweight as well.  Social learning and all - basically it said since peer groups learn from one another their eating habits and also overweight peer groups tend to focus social events on food and thinner ones on exercise based events.

Anways...I do have a point with this...

And I want to write this and hope that no one will be offended - I don't mean to hurt anyone, its simply an observation about my life which I have made.

I have a lot of enablers in my life who give me the excuses to allow myself to stay or become large.  From the partner who tells me that he is sure a few chips won't hurt, to friends who gift me with sweets, to family members who tell me to give in to my cravings.

None of these people want to or are trying to hurt me in any way.  But I need to learn what messages surrounding food I want to listen to and now.  I'm, right now, choosing to listen to the ones that will help me meet my goals, and those aren't the ones that I am getting from my social support network.

This is why I am paying for the weight loss center.  To get new messages in my life surrounding food and to learn new habits.  And guess what?  It's working.  The weight is coming off.

The weekend

I spent the weekend demonstrating cake.  CAKE.  Many hours of standing in front of cake, smelling cake, cutting cake.  And NOT eating cake.  Yes it was as frustrating as it sounds because it was GOOD cake.  And I did not even bring any home.

Weekends are hard.  the schedule changes - I don't have class, I have work.  Everyone around me is in weekend, relaxing mode.  I am in 'well...days are less than 14 hours out of the house long, I guess I can call this a break mode'.  And weekends are when I am less motivated to cook, or cook something decent.  I want fast, easy and tasty then.

But I was good - I didn't eat cake, we didn't go out to eat, and although we bought a grocery store chicken, I stayed in line with my plan.

By Monday I was frustrated - I had an I don't want to be doing this moment.  I am tired of menu planning in advance. Of spending too much time thinking, and I was tired of not having me time.

Turns out that was my body's ways of saying 'Tuesday you will be sick'.

Its moments like these when I pull out my fav quote "Courage does not always roar.  Sometimes courage is the voice at the end of the day saying I'll try again tomorrow"

I will again tomorrow.  Today?  I'm eating veggie soup, and likely going to not eat all the food I'm supposed to.  But I will also not be doing a lot.