18Dec09 Checking In
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It’s not as though I haven’t been thinking tons about what I’m doing and not doing – but the actual act of writing it all down has got lost in the tinsel, gingerbread and shopping lists.

I’ve put on two pounds which may or may not be “real”. I need vegetables but can’t find them in any satisfactory form at a reasonable cost.

I will be eating out three meals a day until Monday so commit to the following:

  • order smallest size of everything – it’s always enough
  • everything on the side – tastes better that way
  • don’t bother with desserts – they always disappoint
  • don’t even think about the baked goods that could accompany every single cappuccino

Enjoy the company
Enjoy the food
Get the shopping done!

See you on Monday.

No Comments Posted by Millie in Things to try, Thoughts on the Process
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14Dec09 Health and Weight Loss
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I rarely get sick. My viral history for 2009 was a three day cold in January.

But I get things. Things that require prodding and poking and scanning and sometimes slicing and dicing. And when I get these things I find it hard to think of anything else.

I guess you’ve guessed that I’ve got a thing.

I was great with the GP telling me that I had an ulcer. And fine when she suggested an ultrasound to rule out gallstones.

But the words “cystic” and “lesion” in the same sentence have sent my anxiety levels into the stratosphere. DO NOT GOOGLE THEM. In fact, I haven’t given you enough information to make googling a worthwhile adventure.

Last year I started with – “let’s just have this checked” and was under a general anaesthetic within the month. It seems to be happening again. And it makes Christmas a very stressy time.

So what does this all do to the eating?
Part of me can’t eat because I feel kind of sick.
Part of me wants to stuff down the carbs to quell the anxiety.
Part of me wants to eat a tub of ice-cream to prove that I’m not losing weight as a symptom of a fatal disease.
But all of me really wants to be sane.
Sadly, it being Christmas, and me being all alone in this house until the end of the week, this may not be a possibility. (Thank God for the arrival of the husband on Friday – he knows me.)

My GP is not worried and told me three times in one conversation not to let it spoil my Christmas. She did point out that, if they were really worried, I would have been rushed in on the 2 week plan for people with suspected cancer.

(It’s an extraordinary policy of the UK government and it works – at least in our area. The downside, of course, was the time I got rushed to the breast cancer clinic within 10 days of seeing my GP about one-sided breast pain and I was a messy mess – dead and gone – until the findings came back negative for anything. Again, DO NOT GOOGLE)

So I’m still weighing myself every morning to prove that I’m not wasting away.
I don’t think I’m yellow – but the lighting in this house does give everything an amber hue…….
I only started to itch all over when I read that it’s a symptom of liver cancer and I try not to count symptoms with such timing.

And I’ve tried to ignore the articles that say the worst cases have no symptoms at all. Bother!

I’m going to try to write more this week and worry less. However, you may hear a tiny whisper of anxiety behind everything I say. Or maybe a giant shout. But I need to keep this project going. The one thing I don’t want to do is gain ten pounds out of groundless fear. It just ends up being a pain and a disappointment when I’m all healed up and healthy again. And I should be healed up and healthy but the end of January. Be positive with me!

2 Comments Posted by Millie in Health
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9Dec09 “Take it Easy on Yourself”
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My default mode for “taking it easy on myself” is to let myself eat what I want and sit around watching endless tv or burying myself in a book avoiding the responsibilities that are pressing in on all sides.

Part of this Talking It Off process is resetting my default modes when it comes to behaviour that leads to weight gain.

So how am I going to lighten up and take care of myself during this stressful time?

  • I can let go of all those things that are sad or hard but that I can’t change.  I’m not going waste another minute worrying about them.
  • I can live in the certainly that anything can be dealt with as it arises and not a minute sooner.  This is a time of year to live in the moment and make the most of the process.
  • I can trust that Christmas is going to be great because of all the people coming together.
  • I can eat to nourish my body – not to insulate myself against the stress.  It doesn’t work anyway.
  • I can set my sights on moving around and doing rather than sitting around and brooding.
  • I can allow myself to celebrate getting the little things done.
  • I can ignore the big picture for a while.
  • I can let other people share in taking responsibility for the collective happiness of the family.
  • I can just let go and trust.

OK – I guess it’s pep-talk season!

1 Comment Posted by Millie in Thoughts on the Process
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9Dec09 Some Days It’s All Too Much
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This, of course is just another phrase for discombobulation. At the end of October I wrote:

The tidal motion of hormones is something I’d better get used to.  When I take the time to pay attention to what’s going on with my body and my emotions then I come through the storms pretty much unscathed.  But those weeks when I’m already stressed by work and the husband does something which may be just a little annoying and the kids don’t phone – or they do phone and they NEED me – well, that’s when my “crazy head” runs all over the place screaming that the ship is going down – swim for your lives!

I guess I should listen to myself sometimes.

Is life stressful right now?  yes

Is the hormone wave threatening?  yes

Is Christmas looming?  yes

Can I control the weather?  no

Can I bring Dad back for Mom?  no

What can I control?  Well there’s a good question.

I can eat well.  I can drink more water – yes, I mean expensive bottled mineral water. I can do a couple of the things that are on my list.  I can accept that I can’t do everything.  I can “live life lightly” till this moment passes.

So how do I make decisions when I feel so indecisive?  I guess I can take a deep breath and do something.  Then I can smile at my ineptitude if it doesn’t all work out perfectly.

I need to go easy on myself but in the right ways…….this is turning into another post.

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7Dec09 New Look
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I loved the look of the other theme but it was lacking a couple of features that make writing more of a pleasure – specifically an edit button. This one also has a nifty thing for finding previous posts at the bottom of the page.

So welcome to the new-look site!

3 Comments Posted by Millie in Talking It Off Info
6Dec09 Site Stuff
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I’m going to play with some new themes today so don’t be alarmed if things change around a bit then go back to normal.

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6Dec09 Consequences of Over Eating
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Below are my weights the past few mornings.

Since I had freaked myself out about needing an mri, I decided that I needed to know for sure that I wasn’t losing weight because I was ill but because I was eating less and moving more. I needed to prove that I did have an appetite and was not going to end up wasting away like my mother. So I ate. Maybe you can tell from the stats on which day I ate the most.

Wednesday-144.2
Thursday-145.6-after a day of pretty heavy eating. interesting.
Friday-145.6
Saturday-148 Really? In 24 hours? Interesting……
Sunday-144.4 After one normal healthy day – see why daily weighing works for me?

Mardee commented on my post about eating anything I wanted that she couldn’t do that “with impunity”. After looking up “with impunity” :-) – without having to deal with the consequences – I have to agree with her. There are always going to be consequences for me when I decide to just go out and EAT – mindfully or mindlessly- and I did some of both.

Consequence 1: Weight

There is no doubt that unfettered eating means my weight goes up. But it doesn’t mean that I actually gained almost 4 pounds of fat in a couple of days. However, if I’d gone to WW on Saturday and had my one weekly weigh-in, I might have believed that I had actually gained all that weight. That’s why daily weighing works for me. It keeps me sane in a way that the weekly weigh-in cannot.

Consequence 2: Head Damage (can’t think what else to call it)

A couple of days of unfettered eating leads to a mindset that’s hard to reign in. In other words, once I’ve opened that loaf of bread, it’s hard to imagine preparing a pile of roast vegetables, lean meat and basmati rice. Once I’ve spread the butter on the bread, I know that nothing green, red or orange is bound to pass my lips for the rest of the day.

Consequence 3:  Long Term Damage

This is something that has changed over this year.  When I started eating in grief last January, I didn’t stop for well over a month by which time the weight gain and head damage were real.  In previous years, it’s taken several months or more.  Even this time, I was hoping to stop after a day but it took four.   I know now how easy it is to fall back into a lazy carb-dominated diet.

Weird? Pathetic? Undisciplined? Why yes, thank you – all of the above. But that’s why I’m here and talking about this stuff.

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5Dec09 Getting a Grip – Laziness 2
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Once I fall into the Ditch of Little Effort I find it hard to get back to my more energetic life. The ditch is comfy and warm and…..well, fat-producing.

So I think I need a plan starting right now.

Porridge for breakfast – with yoghourt and blueberries – cooked on the stove and not the microwave.

Soup for lunch – there’s a butternut squash, onion and 2 potatoes in the cupboard under the sink just waiting for that destiny.

Dinner….turkey chilli I think – a batch should last a couple of days. Black beans, peppers and onions are already in the cupboard.

And some fruit. I’ll buy some oranges. Oranges are not good fruit for the lazy. Anyone living in the Ditch of Little Effort will not want to be bothered with the peeling palaver.

And I will walk today – as I’m not going to the city or waiting for the oven repairman, I’m going to walk along the seawall and maybe get a cup of tea at the local cafe.

So that’s a plan.
I can also:

  • go in search of Christmas decorations in the basement
  • clear out all the old baking supplies in my mom’s cupboards and replace with new
  • start the gingerbread house – but not buy the candy until ready to glue them on to the house
  • sort books and take them to the thrift shop
  • send the hundreds of begging letters back to their senders with a little note that the man they’re asking for money has been dead almost a year

I wish I could be more philosophical this morning and say wise things about losing weight and keeping it off, but, when I’m mired in laziness, the only way forward is a plan.  And it has to be in writing or it will dissipate in a sea of vague notions about what I ought to be doing.

Till tomorrow.  M.

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4Dec09 Results of the Eat Anything Experiment
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So for two days I ate what I wanted and, most tellingly, what required no preparation on my part.

EUREKA!   I think I’ve just discovered something!

I’m not so sure that I get into the habit of eating carbs because they have some powerful effect on my physical self.  I think I eat them because they are easy.  When I give myself permission to eat whatever and however I want, I choose lazy eating.  Bread is lazy.  Bread and butter is lazy.  Bread and butter for two meals a day is really really lazy.

Bread and butter with a couple of really nasty leftover chocolate thingies is beyond the pale of lazy.

According to my on-line journal, I have gone from eating twice the required amount of fruit and veg to virtually nothing.  I didn’t even eat the fruit garnish on my lunch plate at a restaurant yesterday.

So today it’s back to cooking porridge and making soup and preparing vegetables.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

2 Comments Posted by Millie in Food, Thoughts on the Process
3Dec09 Discombobulation
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Discombobulation is a technical term used by the Talking It Off community to define those times in life when things seem to be irretrievably tied up in knots.

After a few weeks of vague illness (an ulcer, perhaps, says my doc) and an inconclusive ultrasound and a booked mri and a flight across the world and a husband the same distance away from home but in the opposite direction, and a memory-impaired mother who has just realised that her husband is dead and……well, Christmas is coming, you know, and I am still the mother who must make it magic, the result is:  Discombobulation. (with a capital D)

And I ended up in that weird place where I worry that I’m losing weight, not because I have been working harder than ever to drop the pounds but because I’m dying.  The fact that I started having these fatal symptom AFTER the mention of the mri and not before makes my rational self want to slap my discombobulated self but I know if won’t do any good.

So instead, just for today, I decided to eat what I wanted – to wander round the grocery store and pick up anything I fancied and eat it in any quantity I chose.  It was kind of freeing and I found that I DID still have an appetite and that I could eat quite a lot when I really wanted to.  In fact, I ate enough at 2 pm that it’s 8 pm now and I’m still not hungry.

It wasn’t junk either – good bread and good pasta and good cheese.  I also bought all the ingredients for making soup for the weekend.  All good. And I feel a little less discombobulated.

I’m heading to the big city tomorrow so might try Blackberry blogging – or might just immerse myself in Christmas shopping.  We’ll see.

3 Comments Posted by Millie in Thoughts on the Process
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