A Small Chrismas Miracle

Sometimes things just work out in my favor without a huge effort on my part. I've been cruising along on the Swartzbein diet without too much thought and stalled out at a 9 pound weight loss. I spent too many days getting up on the scale only to be bitterly disappointed, so I quit looking for awhile.

I finally decided to get back on the scale the other day (I usually avoid the scale like the plague as it has only ever meant bad news) and, lo and behold, I have lost 15 pounds now. To say that I was surprised is a total understatement. So the Swartzbein Principle has been working steadily away. Of course, I finally gave up alcohol as she suggested (that happened about 2 weeks ago). That was a big step for me as I love me a glass of vino with my dinner. But, hey, losing 15 pounds is a nice substitute.

I'm still going on and off of coffee though. Gad, but that one is kicking me to the curb. I know it's got to go.....

Bad Habits

It is most unwelcome to realize that at some point bad habits simply must be sacrificed upon the altar of good health. I am decidedly and unhappily at that point. I'm sure you're thinking that my bad habits must be really awful, but they are of the most garden variety and I cling to them as a drowning man does a lifeboat. What little badness I have is far worse for me than for most and yet I hate to give up my few pleasures, since they are so few indeed. To what do I refer, you impatiently ask? Coffee and alcohol.

Coffee has gone away already, as I ground that habit to a screeching halt when I learned that caffeine spikes the insulin and therefore ruins an entire day of eating. Forget it. My struggles with it in the past buried under my indignation of how ruinous it is to me.

Ah, but alcohol is another story altogether. It spikes the insulin as well, but I have made little headway into eradicating that nasty bit from my daily fare. I get a far bigger jolt of fun from it than coffee and just don't want to give it up yet. I KNOW I must. I resist....... sigh.......

Yet more scale madness...

In the last few months, I've really just been drifting along, wondering what I'm going to do about this whole weight issue and then I found a couple books written by a doctor that I bought almost a decade ago and never really read carefully. So, determined to not give completely up, and deciding that I had nothing to lose except my excess weight, I gave them a try.

The books in question are The Schwartzbein Principle and The Schwartzbein Principle cookbook written by Daina Schwarzbein, M.D. and Nancy Deville. What I like about these books is the Ms. Schwarzbein gives you a thorough explanation of the biochemistry of how your metabolism works and explains why you need to eat the diet she is proposing. It all made a great deal of sense to me and so a few weeks ago I started on the diet.

The first week was lovely as weight just dropped off me, a total of 7 pounds. The last 2 weeks have not proved to give me any more weight loss, although I do feel a bit better than I did before and I'm sleeping rather well, which is always a problem for me. I enjoy the food on the diet as well, as it's not a restrictive or fussy as so many other diets I have tried. In her defense, Ms. Schwarzbein does say that the body needs to heal and won't lose weight until it is ready to do so, and so I'm trying to hold my faith in that while the scale mocks me with the same number day after day. At least it's not going up.....

Her web site has a test you can take to tell you what sort of testing you might want to get to see the state of your health. I just took it and ended up needing the most expensive/extensive one at $495.00, which I cannot afford to purchase. I'm quite certain that I could use some good professional advice here, but poverty has it's limits. I'll have to mull this over while I continue with her program the best I can.

She also has a few helpful items for download on her site including a food, mood and exercise diary, a one year Menstrual Cycle Calender, and a blood sugar diary. I'm printing out the food diary right now! Since my memory can be a little dicey this should prove a welcome addition to help solve my problems.

I just ordered her latest book as well, The Program, which may help me design a more comprehensive diet regime. We shall see...

Mystery weight gain

May I just say that getting on the bathroom scale makes me turn into a crazy person. I do NOT understand this body. I just don't get it. WHY do I keep putting on weight? Grrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrr.......

I just spent the last 2 hours perusing the metabolism and weight lifting books on Amazon, trying to get a handle on the insanity of an ever upward shifting of my weight. I know I'm doing it all wrong, I just don't know what will work....

Grrrrrr, grrrrrrrr.....

Bathroom inspiration

I can't say WHY ideas always seem to come to me when I'm sitting on the pot, but true to form I had a tiny revelation yesterday on the origin of my emotional eating while evacuating my bowels. Some good came out with the bad, so to speak.

It occurred to me that the ability to bend oneself to the needs of others and live according to their rules and desires has a secret side effect; stuffing oneself with food. If you have to subjugate your own desires, those desires don't really go away and they still want release. Food is a convenient plug for the inconvenient desire. I imagine that there are lots of convenient plugs for inconvenient desires; drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, chocolate, sex, starvation, cutting etc. Pick yer poison!

Own whole darn nation seems plugged up one way or another.

Food issues brings another level of insanity with it though, as food is necessary to live. I mean, you can give up drugs and alcohol with no ill effects. Giving up food is not really an option.

Contemplating a lifetime of giving myself over to the needs of everyone else makes me want to devour my refrigerator. When I think about it, almost everything I do is for someone else, even the invisible authority figure ones like the tax man and the bill collector. I'm trying to think of what I did for myself yesterday and I'll be darned that all I really did was feed myself.

What a sorry lot....

The irritating facts regarding exercise

It's necessary, that's irritating enough really, but the point I'm trying to make is exactly how much and what type of exercise is the best and most effective. I've been mulling this whole business over for several weeks now, since I decided to put in a meditation and workout room in my formal dining room. A formal dining room is perhaps not the best room for me to have anyway (as it's an invitation to have dinner parties and make bad food).

There are several candidates; the Beachbody series, Dr. Al Sears Pace workout, yoga, Tai Chi, and free weights. Decisions, decisions.... I will probably be trying them all out to see what works.

I need some special flooring/mats as well and have been pricing those out. Not terribly expensive really since I only need 8'x8' of flooring.

The last time I worked out I was infuriated the entire time, so I expect that this will be a VERY frustrating experience for me across the board. I'm not looking forward to this even though I KNOW it will be incredibly helpful to me. I'm angry about it now and I'm only thinking about it, sigh.....  grrrrrrr...

More on the Secret part...

The one aspect of compulsive eating that I think goes across the board is the whole hidden act of eating. It's not enough to eat a regular meal with other people because the/my true desires about food are unacceptable. Who wants to see a loved one stuff their face? Not a chance.... I don't need their disapproval, I have plenty of my own going already.

Later, when all are away, the monster comes alive with it's needs. Ice Cream... now! Chips with sour cream.... now! Beer... now! And the thing that makes it all so disastrous is the stubbornness of the desire and the self-hatred that comes so quickly after the need has been met. The inner dialogue is just ridiculous too, arguing with myself endlessly over whether or not to have something, giving in and then hating myself for it. This goes on all... day... long...

My personal monster is craving; craving food, craving alcohol, craving sweets. It just goes WAY beyond desire. Desire can wait a bit. Craving is a monster with a huge unsatisfied appetite. No matter what I eat, it will never be enough. Disgusting, eh?

I'm working on it...

Why a secret blog?

Why indeed!

Because I don't want to have to explain anything to anyone about my feelings. I don't want to answer questions about why I feel the way I do. I just DO! I make NO apologies here, to friends or family. Strangers don't concern me as their feelings have no real impact on me. Love me or hate me, this is it and after a lifetime of being controlled by cravings for food I have the right to create my own little world where my feelings matter above all else.

Who am I? Who cares? I'm just like everyone else except I'm consumed with food. Depriving myself and indulging myself over and over and over...

My purpose is to have a safe place to talk about the insanity of the monster within that has compelled me to eat until I have become morbidly obese. I need a place to put down the ugliness of that monster, to reveal it's nasty face and to be relentlessly honest about how it has made me a crazy person who cannot cope with life.

And I can hardly cope at all....

So my secrets are going here, to be saved out in cyberspace for me and anyone else who cares to have a look. Don't say I didn't warn you, it won't be pretty....