Millie

After 30 years of battling the same 30 pounds, I decided that the permanent solution lay in talking and talking and talking until the underlying issues got figured out. Welcome to the work in progress! Gracie, Mardee & Donna also drop by to chat about their own weight loss journeys.

Happy Weight Gain

Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Apr 092010

OK – so I’ve eaten without really thinking for the past few days and my weight has come back up. It’s very odd to find this a happy event but it is. When I lost 2lbs in the course of all the Easter Feasting, I panicked a little that I was really sick.

In the absence of an answer, I have a tendency to fill in the blanks with bad news. (I’m guessing most people do that.)

But today the sun is shining again and my weight is where it should be so I’m going to be positive on that basis alone.

I’ve also decided to believe what little information my specialist has given me. After all, just because he’s not great with patients doesn’t mean he’s not a good doctor. I’ll still get a second opinion but, in the mean time, unless I want to be properly crazy, I’ll believe that I’m not in any imminent danger.

So on with the show. And today I’m going to eat carefully – mostly because my stressed out stomach doesn’t respond well to too much food.

Taking Control

Health, Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Apr 072010

After four months of appointments, blood tests and scans of the expensive kind, I’m no closer to understanding what I’ve got than when my GP sent me my ultrasound report. So on Tuesday I decided to take more control of my situation. I wrote a letter with all my unanswered questions to the consultant and took a copy to my GP.

The GP thing was the best move ever as she was appalled that I didn’t have any answers to fairly straightforward questions.

Then the specialist phoned me at home to ask about the letter and STILL didn’t answer any of the questions. He really doesn’t get it and I think I’ve run into a huge cultural wall. I’m just not sure which one.

Is it just that he’s a medical specialist and I’m a medical nothing?

Is it that he’s a man who doesn’t like to be questioned by women?

Is it more that he’s a man from a very male dominated Asian culture and I’m a woman?

At first I was blaming the “Canadian in Britain” thing but I’ve worked with a few specialists over the years and not one has been anything other than polite, respectful of my questions and informative. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve had such a positive experience of all things NHS (National Health Service) that this has really stunned me.

Anyway, after having told me that my case would go to a committee of other specialists, it now seems that he’s going to have a chat with the radiologist. Not good enough.

I’m off to Canada for a month but will be in touch with my GP and insist on seeing a real liver specialist when I get back. I was almost ready to collapse into a depressed heap over this until the husband reminded me that I need to fight for my own health and peace of mind.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m also going to hold steady on the weight thing. I’m still around 144lbs – pretty much where I wanted to be. I don’t want weight loss confusing health issues right now. I am, however, going to get as much fresh air as possible and just walk all I can in daily life until I’m back.

In the mean time, there’s SO MUCH to do before I go.

Living in Limbo

Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Apr 052010

So I went back to the specialist and it was the most frustrating appointment of my life. He hadn’t yet read the results of my mri. The appointment was for the sole purpose of getting the results of my mri.

He did a rather bad job of NOT telling me what they said as he read bits out loud and told me there was probably nothing too serious but he’d have to talk about it with his colleagues. So we know for sure that the ultrasound was correct and there’s a complex cyst on my liver and there is also one more cyst though I don’t have any more information about that one.

We also know that I will need more appointments but I don’t know for what, with whom or when. I will apparently know more next Monday after he has spoken to colleagues at a departmental panel.

After a couple of days I calmed down enough to write a comprehensive list of questions that I want answered.

And what effect has all this had on my eating? Well I’ve just been eating and staying off the scale so I’m assuming that my weight will be up when I finally get around to it. Of course, it’s also been a weekend of Easter feasting which has been lovely and full of laughs and sunshine – just what I’ve been needing.

I thought I was going to have a good post here but the more I type, the more I realise that I’m not in the right space to be doing this. I’m going to have to think hard about what I’m going to do to keep the weight off through the next stage of this stuff. Sigh. I really really just wanted answers.

Better than the Scales

Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Mar 302010

Sometime last year I told this story:

I was looking for something to wear for a casual evening out and came across my tailored black wool trousers hanging in the wardrobe. I wasn’t in the best of moods – feeling like you do when you can’t find something you want to wear. I was “feeling fat” and not a happy bunny. But the pants were a generous cut and I knew they should be a bit loose so I would be comfortable.

I pulled them on and, horrors, they were snug – not tight tight but certainly not comfortable enough to wear out for dinner. I was devastated. I’d been working really hard and was sure that those pants should have been loose.

But the pants don’t lie. So I tearfully chucked them back into the wardrobe.

Then I noticed another pair of black wool trousers folded on the bottom of the wardrobe – my tailored trousers. HOLD EVERYTHING! I grabbed the other pair. They were my daughter’s old Warehouse UK size 12 (6/8 US) black wool trousers. Ha.

HA ha ha ha a ha bloody ha. As though scale insanity were not enough, I’d discovered Pants Insanity.

Well I got them out again this morning and I’m very happy to report that they fit for real now – not snug at all. I’m wearing them as I type this – sorry that I didn’t think of them sooner.

I really must remember that, while my mind has a ways to go in this battle, my body is doing ok. I forget that some days.

Waiting for the Start

Keeping Going, Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Mar 292010

That’s the only way I can describe how I feel right now. I know there is only a tiny chance that I will get bad news at my appointment on Thursday – and yet I feel as though I’m walking towards a starting line and that things are going to be different on the other side.

The overall effect has been the need for super-strength willpower to avoid eating as though “rules don’t apply” this side of the line.

Happily, the husband is coming home from his week away and I’m going to ask him to help me with the willpower thing. He mentioned on the phone how much he’d like to be back in shape and we’re quite a team when we both decide to have the same goal.

One of the results of this “on the other side” phase of my life is that I’ve made several resolutions for when I get past that line and most of them are based on the promise to myself to be more assertive and less concerned that people like me. Among other things, I plan to:

get rid of about 100 or so facebook “friends” – people with whom I have little past or present.
get more proactive in my business and conquer my fear of appearing too demanding. First goal is to draw a line under a proposal that has been stalled for too long. It’s time to move on.
make a practical plan for pursuing dreams NOW and not when we have more money. It’s time for change and time for living.

There are more but those are the ones I keep coming back to. Interesting that nowhere do I mention body/food sanity. That’s because that goal is in process and will continue.

Off to work.

I Thought I Had It

Things to try, Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Mar 282010

The answer. I thought I had an answer to the question of “feeling fat” but it turns out I only had some disjointed thoughts that didn’t sound all that sensible once written down but I may try later.

Instead I’ll bore on about stress management.

Yesterday went quite well as far as stress relief and food went.

I walked and sorted out a few little niggling things.
I bought enough food for two days – food that I can look forward to and that requires some preparation.
I talked to the absent husband.
I let myself get hungry then enjoyed feeding my body rather than my feelings.
I did have a glass of wine but it was to go with dinner rather than to “relax”.
I made some decisions.
I snipped off a couple of dead branches in the garden.

Oh I hate reports of the “What I Did” variety – so here’s the incomplete thought about “feeling fat”. I can’t trust what I see in the mirror, how my clothes fit, what the measuring tape says, the number on the scale. When I’m determined to “feel fat”, the only thing I can do is ask myself which direction my behaviour with food is leading me.

Am I heading toward my goal of health and sanity or am I heading away from it?

Rather than putting any faith at all in “feelings” about these things, I am only going to assess how I’m acting.

Am I more sane or less sane than I was yesterday?
Am I more full or less full than I was yesterday?
Have I moved more or less than I did yesterday?

And there can only be one of two responses: I can keep doing what I’m doing because it’s positive or I can change what I’m doing because it’s negative.

I don’t get to beat myself up or wallow in temporary satisfaction. I bang on about hating when other people attach being “good” and “bad” to talking about eating but I realise that I do it in my head all the time.

Little steps on a long journey.

No Doubts

Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Mar 272010

Thanks to daily weighing, I can now safely say without a doubt that eating and drinking too much and moving too little lead to weight gain.

Yes,

I know,

D’UH.

But there are still weeks when I’d like to “get away with it”- defy nature, as Donna said.

Bizarrely, until I typed the words “defy nature”, I had forgotten what I’d written about just a few days ago. It must be something that I really need to process in order to get over this period/slump/quagmire.

On a positive note, I am certainly more body aware now than I was a couple of years ago. A “slump” like this would last months or more and I wouldn’t step on the scale until my weight was into the 160s – or the 170s as in January 2008.

So I’m happy that I get this feeling at 146. I promised the women over at BCB that I wouldn’t weigh more than 145.8 by the time I got to my specialist’s appointment at the hospital next week. Rather than set that as a distant boundary, I used it as a safe target so that I could give myself permission to eat and drink my stress away. As of this moment, I no longer have that permission.

I have permission to walk off my stress.
I have permission to bubble bath my stress away.
I have permission to curl up with a good book – and there’s one by my bed.
I have permission to work.
I have permission to drink large mugs of tea if I need to feel warm and full.

I don’t have permission to bake and eat.

I don’t have permission to eat more than enough for one person.

I don’t have permission to open another bottle of wine.

And the reason I’m banishing those things is NOT because I want to live some joyless life, but because I simply need to cope with stress in other ways. I know what the other ways are, but I never give them enough of a chance to become real tools in my life. They are always food substitutes rather than real stress-relievers. I want to get my mind to the point that I think of walking or reading when I feel stressed. Right now I think of walking or reading or bubble bathing as something to combat the urge to eat – not something to calm the worry.

Well that was revealing so I’m going to say it again but louder:

Right now I think of walking or reading or bubble bathing as something to combat the urge to eat – not something to calm the worry.

I am going to find foodless drinkless tools for combatting stress. Maybe I should crack that Beck book finally to see if I can make some permanent changes in my thinking.

Happy Weekend.

“I Feel Fat”

Body Image 1 Response »

Mar 232010

I’m thinking that my life’s work should be to discover an antidote to the phrase “I feel fat”.

I know that even skinny girls “feel fat” once in a while. I know that weight/body/food strugglers feel fat (and feel thin) all the time – regardless of available evidence.

These past couple of weeks for me were a storm of virus, hormones, travelling, work stress and health worry. The virus stopped me exercising and the rest made for some chaotic eating. The result was that I “felt fat” and even watched the scales start to creep up to the point that I didn’t want to stand on them.

Because, you know, if you don’t weight yourself then the weight hasn’t changed.

If I had kept up the daily weighing, I would have seen the weight come down too but I let my “I feel fat” head rule for days. Then, yesterday before the MRI, I had to get weighed.

I’m happy to report that I don’t care about situations like that any more but I do guess what the number will be and I was thinking 153lbs because, well, I was “feeling fat”. Anyway – fully clothed, in the middle of the day, I weighed 148lbs. Absolutely fine, normal and not “fat”. Really. I need a brain transplant.

So I stepped on the scale this morning and all is well. I still have 9 days in which to NOT eat my worry about the results of the MRI but I’m so pleased to be starting from normal and not some silly imagined inflated weight.

And I still need to figure out an alternative to “feeling” when it comes to body image.

When Indeed….

Keeping Going, Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Mar 212010

Donna wrote this the other day and I’ve been saving it for a post:

We have such a strange relationship with food. We know that we can eat quite large amounts of ‘good food’ (veggies, fruits etc) and we can also eat small amounts of ‘bad food’ (chocolate, fast food, wine). Instead of being content with that, we throw a temper tantrum because we want to do the reverse, i.e. eat small amounts of the good food while consuming large amounts of the bad food, and then we’re surprised when we gain weight. Please note that when I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘I’. When am I going to make peace with reality and stop testing to see if the laws of nature have changed just because I want them to?

Can I ask that one again in two parts?

When am I going to make peace with reality?
When am I going to stop testing to see if the laws of nature have changed?

Making peace with reality:

Over the past couple of years I’ve made peace with a couple of food/body realities:

My shape is my shape and nothing is going to change that. And it’s not a bad one. As the husband says, “No matter how much you weigh, you HAVE a shape and that’s good.”

Clothes are not going to automatically look good despite a smaller body. I no longer dream of wearing things that aren’t naturally going to suit my body shape. And that’s ok.

The “when I’m thin” fantasies of old are just that. I’ve got a thinner 48 year old body – not the thinner 21 year old body that I somehow used to see when I thought about the future me. I’m making peace with my belly because, though smaller, it’s here to stay.

My personality is such that I don’t always take the straightest, shortest route on any journey and that includes the one to food/body sanity. I’m ok with lots of detours and a longer than necessary journey – though I am getting a bit fed up now that I’m down to the last few pounds and I seem to be rolling backwards.

I simply can’t sustain enthusiasm for any length of time but that doesn’t mean I have to be fat and out of shape. I’m tend to live a feast or famine life – with spurts of energy for things like cooking and exercise. I just need to make sure that boring daily life involves getting off the sofa and filling my body with healthy food – even if it’s all done a bit lazily sometimes. There will always come a time when I want to run again.

Well – more peace in this life than I thought!

And what about wanting to change the laws of nature? Donna really pin-pointed an issue for me. It’s not an everyday thing but it certainly affects me when I’m feeling stressed about the unknown. No matter how many other things I seem to have got to grips with, when I want to relieve stress, I think about feeling full. And I don’t stop to think about all the possible foods that could have that effect. I instantly think of carbs and fat – rice and butter, bread and peanut butter, cheese and crackers, oats/ sugar/butter in any combination.

I don’t think of a large salad with a tin of tuna and some balsamic dressing. That would be filling and good and healthy but my dysfunctional brain can’t imagine it having the same comforting effect as oatmeal cookies or flapjack.

And when I’m feeling that no other food will do, I am completely oblivious to the laws of nature that state that, if I want to lose weight, I need to compensate for those calories somehow. Maybe even thinking about that would somehow take away the soothing effect of the food. It would break into that (very) temporary state of peace and ruin the whole point of the exercise.

To be honest, my inner stress eater scoffs at those people who suggest that a bath or a walk is as effective as food for stress relief even though I know it to be absolutely true. A bubble bath with a magazine is a major de-stresser. A run on a spring day has a huge mood improving effect. But I still want cheese and crackers. And I still want to lose weight.

And so I keep thinking and writing and making daily/hourly/minutely decisions about how this process is going to go.

All advice welcome- though most of it will probably be ignored because I seem to need to learn the hard way.

Post #154 – Cool Eh?

Things to try No Responses »

Mar 182010

I didn’t notice #150 passing by so thought I’d pause to celebrate this milestone. (pause, celebrate)

I got my hospital appointment for April 1st – two weeks from tomorrow. I was doing pretty well up to that point but now I just feel sick. Silly, really, because nothing is better or worse than before. Whatever is or isn’t wrong with me still is or isn’t wrong. In my logical world I get that. But in my crazy head, I still feel worried.

Deep breaths.

I stumbled over this BBC article from a couple of weeks ago. In my limbo state, this is exactly the kind of certainty that I would like.

swab
test
You should eat this amount of protein and this amount of carbs and this amount of fat for maximum, effortless (I added that – it’s my fantasy) weight loss.

Simple.

I need simple right now.

I’m off to London for a couple of days. It’s work but it should be distracting. The husband is coming with me – mostly because I don’t think he likes the idea of me careening down motorways at 80 mph when I’m stressed. I have pointed out that I did it last week just fine but I’m happy for the company. (And, actually, my driving was a bit loopy last week but I haven’t told him that.)

I’ve rebelliously put together a one hour workshop that does not contain even one powerpoint slide so I’m going to leave my laptop at home and read a book if I have any downtime.

Till the weekend then.

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Talking It Off

Millie

Happy Weight Gain

Taking Control

Living in Limbo

Better than the Scales

Waiting for the Start

I Thought I Had It

No Doubts

“I Feel Fat”

When Indeed….

Post #154 – Cool Eh?

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