In Bulk

As of this moment, I have lost seven pounds since Dec. 1. My goal through the holidays was to lose not gain. Even one pound would have been a victory. And it was FIVE, then another TWO in the past week (since I started lifting/cardio regularly). There were ups and downs but never up to or over the starting point.

I call this an unqualified success. Go, ME! I am also around pain levels of 2-3, with occasional 5s. But nothing over a 5 in the past week.

One way to approach everything, that I sometimes over use, is the modeling method. I "model" success and then try to recreate it. This comes from years of reading self-help crap as well as business plan advice. For the most part, it works. But there are times when you don't want to analyze the miracle - you just want to move ahead, be grateful, enjoy it, and keep the benefits coming. So for now, I am not going to analyze why this has happened. There is also the idea that analysis will be a jinx. Or perhaps hubris, that I can somehow advise or prescribe success. I am successful right here and now, but there's always tomorrow and that little thing of buttercream in the freezer.

But what I can safely say is that all of the information I've gathered about pain, exercise, my body, losing weight, nutrition and the random nature of the universe has finally come around to help me. Maybe I just got out of my own way. I don't know.

In many ways, I seem to live my life "in bulk" - aka always as much of a good thing as I can stand until I overindulge. Books, food, dogs, booze, yarn, fabric, dates, activities, plans.... and then I spend a good deal of time washed up and burned out. Not a good thing. So, as vanilla and bland as it sounds, I am working on living in moderation. Skimming along the surface on a sailboard instead of madly thrashing about in the water doing the butterfly.

Metaphorically, of course. My sailboard days are probably over (never say never!), and the butterfly stroke timing has always escaped me. Kick, kick, whut?, drown, arms, whut?, kick... flail.... switch to breaststroke.

Lost in my own metaphor, I will close this entry for now. A final word: Tiberius! (shout-out to some new readers, perhaps?)

Quiet House

The house is quiet. No electronics are on (except for the ambient computer, the inexplicable stack of DVR, VoIP and Xbox thingeys in the living room). I'm listening to the neighbors mow their yard, the dogs napping and the tick of a clock I got at IKEA for my birthday a bazillion years ago.

The kid is away for a weekend youth group thing, and I have hours and hours to myself. I cleaned ALL the surfaces in the kitchen (except for inside the fridge or oven), and I'm moving on to declutter the mountain of clutter that clutters up the clutter-magnet areas in the kitchen, dining room and living room. Decluttering is a job best done when one has all the bills paid, all the dogs happy and all the trash cans empty. Which means it's a daunting task that never gets done around here.

I listened to a couple of radio shows and then turned on the TV thinking that I would putter while watching mindless stuff on TV, but it's not mindless. It's mind-sucking. It draws me right out of my headspace and into something else. It's devious and insidious. Pernicious and a couple of other -iouses. In fact, I'm very close to calling ATT and disconnecting everything except the internet.

Once I'm back in my own groove, I plan to cut out some last things to sew up for a little friend for xmas gifties, and then the epic mail run will be Monday. I always cut it close on the mail drop date, but this year, it's CLOSE.

Most of all, I spent last night watching a fun new show that I've got queued on Netflix: Hotel Babylon. It's a slightly racy hipster version of the Love Boat/Hotel (remember James Brolin's hit TV series?). The hotel theme isn't a new one, but this is a particularly clever one that is nice low-calorie fluff. Knitting with novelty yarn kind of TV. I dabbled in eating myself stupid with popcorn, wine and then some chocolate. By the time I had moved on to the cheese, I realized several major revelations about me: a) booze is a gateway drug to overeating, b) popcorn tastes really awful and leaves your mouth all greasy, and c) my chocolate tastes are very very expensive ones.

I decided that I was going to give myself the gift of weight loss for the holidays. Tonight is a dinner party, so I'll be testing my mettle, but I want to be in the minority. I am GOING TO LOSE WEIGHT DURING THE HOLIDAYS. I won't feel deprived, I won't cheat and I won't mope... it's a gift I richly deserve.

See what a little quiet can do? Uh oh, the neighbor has fired up the mower, now right under my window, so I'm heading into the other bedroom to sew. And not eat.

Insomnia

Can I turn this insomnia into a novel? It would certainly make good use of the time during National Novel Writing Month, in which I am participating again this year.

The day before, though, I am just rattling around in my own head, filled with anxiety about my two jobs, filled with dread about my parenting, and (so typical for a NaNo writer) wondering how I can turn this inner turmoil and personal life crisis into word count.

But first things first: I am going to get a new keyboard, going to set up another computer in the office, and liberate my laptop semi-permanently from the desk. I do have a dual hookup box thingey, where I used to have the lad's PC and Mac sharing the same monitor, but he stopped using the Mac a while back, and I took the computer when the laptop was in the shop.

Make no mistake: the laptop is on its last months of service. I may have to take it in as the mouse and touch pad are sorta hosed.... hmmm, it started after the last "fix" now that I think of it.

I will also spend a good deal of time cleaning house this weekend, in advance of starting to write at midnight Nov. 1. Either this will provide a "clean slate" for novel writing, OR it will remove certain procrastination objects from my sight.

However, all of this busyness comes at a price, and all of this insomnia exacts its own pound of flesh (but in reverse). I'm overweight-er than ever, and desperately in need of a vacation from "crunch time" at two jobs. One job will let up around Dec. 5th, and the other not until Jan. 23.

So, yeah, I'm pretty insane right now, and doubly so because I'm taking on NaNo yet again. The fourth year for me. Mind-boggling! I'll be following Julia Cameron's rubric of three pages a day, and also walking my dog daily. That's the extent of my plan. Perhaps it's diabolically simple, or perhaps it's just simple.

Weight Loss, For the Last Time

About a month ago, I started Weight Watchers again. Previously, I lost about 18 pounds, but gained it all back when my grief hit the big time (and I hit the Texas state line). I did my rounds of Popeye's, chicken fried steaks, Tex-Mex and cobbler. But then it became time to lose it. For good.

By counting the WW points, I write everything down and thus, I account for everything, including booze. I detach myself from any guilt or encouragement or feelings re: food because the last thing I need is to "celebrate" food victories with food. So no celebration when I weigh less... just progress reports.

My goals are to lose back to where I can fit into the summer pants I already own. I have other vain goals, but that's the practical one. I also know that I'll sleep better and feel better if I weigh less (ie, less body pain). My ultimate goal (one of the vain ones) is to look hot in jeans and a white dress shirt.

I also use my weekly points and if I'm running low, I either do some activity, or I just skip a meal. I'm working slowly back into yoga, walking and swimming, and hope to add dog agility into the mix when I get in better shape.

What works out for me over the years is to shop and keep foods that are healthy for me. I have eliminated certain entire classes of food. I don't have soda, cookies or snacks in the house. This makes me creative w/r/t snacking. But it takes more effort to eat a snack than it does to not eat, or grab an apple. If we are out, I go ahead and have the thing I'm craving because if I don't, I'll obsess on it and eat double when I finally do break down and eat it, but I write it down and count the points.

I weigh things, and I measure things. I don't eat fat free anything that is supposed to be a fat. I eat the real food. I put real sugar in my tea. I measured how much I use? and it's 16 calories. Except we have started eating "light" cream cheese.

I'm trying to LIVE, not diet. I stopped all the excuses and justifications. I've had all the Church's fried chicken I "deserve" in my life... I don't feel deprived if I don't get a dessert or a main dish. I still love food, and have found that if we indulge a bit on Monday and Tuesday, our week goes by much better. Last night, we had two kinds of ice cream and tater tots. That was my dinner.

Tonight, I plan something chaste like fish and asparagus. But it has to take totally delicious. I've discovered that if I'm not satisfied, I will continue to eat. That aspect of WW is new, and has been useful. They ask you to rate your hunger. Just adding that to my post-meal calculations brings awareness to the fact that I'm FULL and HUNGRY. Oh. That's a different non-food problem.

So, it goes. My reward system is a little odd: when I lose 10 lbs, I'm getting new underwear. When I lose 25, I'm getting a pony. Maybe.

Data Point

Here is a quick check-in after seven hours up and somewhat active: I have virtually no body pain. It's a good feeling. I did gobble 3 ibuprofen when I got up, and have moved around a bit cleaning the kitchen and sweeping.

Didn't go work out. Yet. If I intend to keep to my promise of not totally screwing up my Weight Watchers weekly point allowance, I need to do some serious activity today and tomorrow. Or all just tomorrow, which could be very bad, and overexerting.

But I scored myself as a 1 on the pain scale about an hour ago. Which is excellent for me. I rarely get 1s!!

I also ate pork on Wednesday, Thursday and today. I am trying to figure out if beef causes me body pain, which it has seemed to in the past, but here is a pork test and no direct results.

So. That was a lot of data points.

Body Issues, Pt. 1

I used to think I was fortunate in that I didn't have major hang-ups about my body. I've always liked it, and it's served me well in the sex department. However, that's a good and functional coping mechanism for what happened when I was a kid, and now overall as I age.

From age 3, I was sick a lot. Various things, mostly "normal childhood diseases." But I did somehow get hepatitis when I was 3, and then I had strep about every three months for a number of years. I remember getting measles and mumps. Measles - "both kinds" I recall my mother saying. I did not die. People get vaccines for these things now. But still, I was sick a lot.

When the polio vaccine came out, there were two version of that. Live and killed. Polio had been killing people, and injuring them for some 30 years in this country, and it was believed to be a miracle from somewhere... so sure, line 'em up and vax 'em down! Except no one in the military (I'm a military brat) heeded the precaution that those with weakened immune systems might not be good candidates for the vaccine. No, it was soldier up and take the medicine.

So, I got vaccine-dogpiled. And got polio from the vaccine. I have no way of knowing if my parents were ever apprised of the risks v. benefits, or just what. Or if they were told that I got polio FROM the VACCINE. It is clear that is what happened. And they told me as a child that "we caught it just in time" and the case of polio I got was "mild" because of their timeliness. But when I brought up this new awareness to them in the early 90s, they were in complete and total denial. Get it from the vaccine? No way, that's not what they told us! They had even forgotten that I was sick for months, on antibiotics nearly every month for a solid year before the vaccine.

I used to have my medical records from early early on, because we "hand-carried" them out of military life into retirement. As a single mom with baby on hip, I took them with me to Australia where I had planned to use them to assist with the anit-vax efforts down there, but that didn't work out at all. Sheer oversight on my part, I left them on a shelf in the home where I was staying, and when I left, it was not on good terms. So not good that the homeowner never replied to my requests for these valuable documents. That loss is keen. Still today. Losing them is probably the deepest wound I got from the whole experience. (The rest of my trip was quite wonderful - Australia is a lovely and beautiful place and its people are awesome. Perhaps more on that in future entries?)

My point is this: without my medical records, I could now never prove anything to anyone about the vax injury. But also the aftermath. There were at least 90 pages of physical therapy notes (extensive testing, these days not documented in as much detail), surgical notes for three surgeries, and similar. It would be important to me, in further medical care, in writing about my illness, to have those records. It would be important to others, I feel. Yes, the loss of those records is keen.

However, I do have the body still. The records only describe what was done to it, and I have the original body. The paralysis I suffered from polio at age 6 went up my left leg entirely stopping at my hip. I could not walk for a good three or four months. I did not lose function, at the time, in my right leg. The growth in that leg was stunted, but more importantly, the protocol after polio was to "take it easy." That was the exact wrong advice. After all the PT, wherein I learned to walk again, further exercise should have been allowed to build muscles and functionality. I grew but the left leg didn't catch up. There was an unequal leg difference and my slight limp became more pronounced as I grew taller. Scoliosis developed and I was put in a Milwaukee brace - from neck to hips. Special shoes were entertained for a few months but they helped nothing and caused pain, so I abandoned them.

You can imagine the social implications of this. Yeah, playground kids LOVE someone who limps. Oh, and the fun of 7th and 8th grade. Yeah. Good times.

Anyway, I had a permanent PE excuse. Great, except I was a very athletic-minded person. I wanted to be running, doing, riding bikes and horses, playing kickball, etc. I did as much as I could without incurring the wrath of my mom, but she never took the hint. I could stay out all day, come home completely dirty, sweaty and happy, and then get up the next day and do it all over again. But still they kept me away from sports and organized activity. After school, once we'd moved to the country, I was out every day with my dog, exploring the woods, climbing trees, trying to catch the neighbor's horses.

Which is why it is so hard for me now to get off my lardass and get to the the gym, or ride my bike, or whatever. But I'm going to do that now, as an experiment, so I can write about it here. It is so difficult to overcome the mental obstacles every.single.time I want to be active. Plus, there's the physical ones - constant physical limitations due to weight gain and now the onset of post-polio syndrome, with constant moderate back pain.

So when it's time to exercise, I can find a million reasons not to, most of which relate to the avoidance of pain, but a sizeable and significant handful of reasons are mental. First of all, it's just not fun for me to deal with all this. The fun is greatly lessened by the time I get into it. Secondly, it is not fun to be having fun and then suddenly lose balance or have a knee buckle and take a tumble, wrenching something in my back. That sucks, in fact. Thirdly, it's just rotten horrible lousy awful to be cranking along on weights or the elliptical, and have some idiot make an idiot comment. My anger at the whole thing is bubbling there just under the surface, and I want to throttle the unsuspecting idiot and remove them from the gene pool. Or hide.

See? Exercise is a good deterrent for depression and stress. Ha!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Body Issues, post work-out.