I've been trying to figure out a better way of getting a handle on what I'm doing, and I have to say that I'm totally resistant to going back to a conventional food diary because I get a little obsessive and weird about it. To say the least. And it's hard for me not to bug Michael about food when I'm writing down everything, and believe me, this is Never A Good Thing. Dr. Mike Eades did this a while ago on the Protein Power blog, so I thought I'd give this a shot... partly because it's different and partly because I found it kind of fascinating in some strange way to see exactly what someone else was eating.
This is kind of fiddly, and I'm not sure how long I can keep it up, but I'm going to try to do this for at least a week.
I should say that I try to keep carbs below 40 at absolute max, and I try to keep calories around 1500 or so because if I'm much below that I become a little crazy hungry, and it is not pretty. And I eat a little more weirdly on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday when I teach and thus can't do as much food prep. I also drink a LOT of tea with a little whole milk or cream.
First we had a protein shake... whey protein, almond milk, liquid vitamins. I know that this totally looks like an ad for Almond Breeze (which, I have to say, is genuinely a great product if a little pricey... low calorie, low carb, and gives you a little protein).
Then I had 1/8 of this beautiful quiche (recipe here), which is a bit less than 200 calories a slice. No crust, almost no carbs.
This was a teaching day for me, so I didn't really eat lunch... instead I had this, which I have to admit that I like but is too high carb for my liking and is also Not Real Food.
When I came home, I had half of a sausage that I'd cooked the night before (125 calories) and a little cabbage that I'd stir-fried. It's hard to tell portion sizes on these plates, but that's maybe 1/2 cup of cabbage. One of the things that I've learned doing this is that it's hard to take good food pics (I have to say that this looks revolting), and that it's impossible to get any sense of scale.
Dinner was the big meal. This is a rib-eye steak, about 8 oz. (and that's where I really could have had only half), cauliflower puree, broccoli, and the brown stuff is a couple of tablespoons of this strange "culinary" gravy that we'd gotten a free sample of from the store (the boys loved it, I was not crazy about it, and isn't calling it "culinary" kind of redundant? Unless they also sell, say, floor-cleaning gravy?)
And I had one of these, also Not Real Food.
In the middle of the night I got up and had a small handful of these pork rinds (about 80 calories, and yes, I could have skipped that...).
All of this, fine from a carb point of view. Without carefully counting the calories, I'd say, this is over the range that I shoot for though not a lot, and you have to call the culprit the steak. And to be honest, I knew at the time that it was really too much, but I was hungry and had eaten little all day, and thus I let its low-carbness outweigh its size.
And now I will leave you with a bonus picture of my adorable cat sleeping.
We all have the best of intentions. The trouble is transmitting intention to action.
I think about this every day. I get up in the morning, and I think, today I will.... . And some of the problem is that my reach is sometimes greater than my grasp, as they say, and some of the problem is that the rest of the world doesn't always want to cooperate with what I think the day should bring, but as much as anything, I see it as a failure to transmit intention to action.
You can't lose weight by intending to. You can't get more exercise by intending to. You can't meditate by intending to, and at the end of the day, you don't get any credit for intentions.
I started writing this post days ago, and I'm still trying to finish, in part because I don't know what to say. I'm tired, and I'm discouraged by my own failures, and I guess by something more that that... that even my best efforts don't seem to have measurable results these days. I feel as if I must be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure that I am. And I am just low and sad, and I have a hard time shaking that for very long.
But what do you do? At the end of the day, you dust yourself off and try again. There's not a lot else that you can do, because the only other option... just giving up... isn't really an option at all.
So, this week I work on turning intention to action.
It's been a rough week or so, here. Yeah, I know, I always say that, but... well, it has been. It's been just over a week since Michael's last bout of whatever-the-hell-it-is weakness and edema and whatever. This one has been worse but considerably shorter. As of today, he's stronger, though not back to where he was, and the edema is going, and he's acting a LOT more like himself. The conversation that we've had approximately 10,000 times over the last ten days is, was this a reaction to drugs (his theory) or was this round 3 (at least) of the same thing (my theory). Either way, (1) I am sick to death of talking about it because I just don't know, and (2) we have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday, and maybe he'll be able to think of some new tests.
Anyway, as I've said about a billion times, Michael gets sick, and I stop taking care of myself. Mainly, although I still eat low carb since it's such a habit, I eat way too much and the wrong food balance, and I don't exercise. Sigh. This is a pattern that just has to stop. So yesterday I went and played racquetball with my students for a while, which was just great, and today I'm menu-planning and class-planning for the week, and hoping to get myself reorganized and back on focus. And tomorrow I will weigh myself, which I haven't done in a week, either... and this is never a good thing.
So let's see where I'm at in a week, whether I can actually balance ME with everything everyone else need from me. At some point, I really have to learn to do that. And then, too, maybe I can post something more entertaining than this constant complaining about how I'm not doing what I should.
I think that I need to set some goal for the week... but I'm not sure what, yet, so I'll think about it and write it out tomorrow.
When I was a kid, no one talked about things like emotional intelligence in terms of life skills. Of course, I was kind of raised by wolves.... my father is so introverted that he wouldn't know a life skill if it bit him (actually, his idea of a life skill is, if you drink enough, you can talk to people). My mother... I loved my mother, I miss my mother deeply and painfully every day, but we didn't have the greatest relationship. It was a funny thing, really... everyone loved my mother, because she was wonderful to people. Kind and generous and giving and accepting and genuinely interested in other people... except that when it came to her daughters, me especially, most of that went out the window. It's not that she didn't genuinely love me or try her best, but her best, when it came to me, was more often the absolute worst thing you could do. And what she taught me in terms of emotional skills.... how to manipulate people emotionally. How to put everyone else's interests ahead of your own and then resent them for it. That the world will come to an end if everyone is not happy with you. Things like that. Sorry, Mom. Really. But it's the truth.
Some days I feel like we spend the rest of our lives unlearning the stuff we learned as kids. I know that's not true for everyone; that some people grow up functional and healthy and understanding the important things... but I guess I know way more people who wouldn't describe themselves that way.
Being healthy is hard for me. As soon as things get a little off balance, all of my "healthy" habits go out the window, and that happens remarkably fast. But I'm working on it. And it gets easier. A little.
And then I look at my son, and I think, what are the things that he needs that I'm not giving him? How could I teach him the emotional intelligence, the balance, that has been so hard for me to learn? I always argue that he's the most balanced person I know, and always has been... but that doesn't mean that he doesn't need help with these things. And one answer, of course, is that you need to model the behavior that you want children to learn.
His father and I didn't do a terribly good job of that. We were never hostile, but our marriage disintegrated into polite roommates nearly as soon as he was born. And that doesn't teach you anything about relationships, interpersonal skills, etc. I thought that Michael and I might be better role models, but it hasn't exactly worked out that way... mostly because there have been so real hardships, mostly medical, ever since we've been married, that a lot of the time we seem to live in this fraught, anxious atmosphere... not the way that it should be. And maybe it won't always be that way... I hope not... but it's the way things are a lot these days, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for my son and what he needs. I wonder sometimes if thirty years from now, he'll be typing these things into his blog... or whatever we do in thirty years. And he'll say the same sort of thing... my mother, I know she loved me, but she could not give me what I needed. I seriously hope not. But you never know.
So it's a good question. How do you teach these kinds of life skills, emotional sanity, appropriate boundaries?
It's just one of those days.
I can't find something I really, really need; my new semester starts tomorrow, and I have no energy, plus I'm buried in tons of little stupid things that I need to do. It's been a hell of a few days, spending every day trying to decide whether this is the day that Michael's breathing problems will be bad enough to go to the hospital. And endlessly going over the symptoms again and again, trying to figure out what the hell the problem is, because no one else seems able to do that.
The good news is, he really seems better today, and I think that we're going to avoid the hospital this time. The bad news is... well, the bad news part 1 is that there's still no way of knowing what leads to this collection of symptoms... extreme weakness followed by breathing problems associated with rapid heart rate and so on. They've checked out all the ordinary stuff. Doesn't seem to be any of those things. But this is the third time this has happened, this time possibly kicked off by 10 days of antibiotics although I'm not sure how that could be, and every time it is more severe, more scary, more frustrating.
The bad news part 2 is that I really don't deal with this well. I'm great in a crisis. Fabulous. But in the aftermath, I'm exhausted and whiny, and I just want someone to fix it all for me, and little things kick off all the spoiled child in me... not being able to find the data CD that I desperately need is making me want to kick and scream until someone fixes it all for me. And Michael, though better, is nowhere near well, and still needs me to be pretty much doing everything for him. This isn't exactly the moment to be coping badly.
So, the question is, how do you learn to take care of yourself when there's no one to take care of you? In a healthy way? I know loads of unhealthy ways, but I also know that, these days, they really wouldn't make me feel any better.
Back in October, I posted about those irritating Electrolux ads with Kelly Ripa and the misguided messages that they send. My candidate for today is Oprah's magazine or, more specifically, the cover photos.
Now, don't get me wrong; I'm a big Oprah fan. She's smart, she's kind, and she seems like a real person. Plus she's done a lot to get people reading some great books, always a good thing in my mind. And her magazine is pretty good, in the ranks of women's magazines.
But unless you've been living under a rock for the last month or so, you have to have heard her confession that she's gained 40 lbs.
So why is her picture on the magazine cover this month (February) exactly the same as every other one? Heavily air-brushed and photoshopped, looking exactly like she looks at her lowest weight. I was trying to find an online copy of this, and the best I can do is direct you to the magazine site, which is here, and note that it's the pic that's on the bottom of the page where it says Hormones 101, the picture where she's dressed in yellow and holding cards (probably this direction won't work after a week or so). Small, but you get the idea.
It's not like I don't have some sympathy about this. I mean, if I were going to be on a magazine cover, I'm sure that I'd like to be as beautiful as possible (although being on the cover every month might lessen that desire a little). But the problem is, I think this just sends all the wrong messages. Primarily the message that you can't be seen in public unless you're thin. That being fat makes you less socially acceptable.
I'm not a fat of the idea of embracing your fat, of fat acceptance, particularly because too much body weight is, in general, not that great for you, and we should all be striving to be more healthy. But that's different from having to look like some ideal, and of hating yourself or finding yourself somehow socially unacceptable because you've put on some pounds. All of that just leads to the same wrong messages, the same self-esteem issues, the same social problems that so many of us have battled. And maybe I'm wrong or too idealistic, but it seems to me that someone like Oprah, someone who has been through these battles herself, should be the poster child for loving yourself at whatever weight you're at, not at airbrushing it away.
Michael is having another recurrence of his breathing/weight gain/fever/weakness symptoms. Almost right on schedule, about every six weeks. Except that I'm not absolutely positive that this is the same thing all over again, because it comes on the tail of 10 days of a very strong antibiotic which might have interacted with his diabetes meds, and it's all a little different... so, very worrisome, unclear whether he should go to the hospital or not (he's a little better today, and the hospital so far has not done anything except monitor him, so we're leaning toward wait until tomorrow and see), and everything in life is on hold again.
And so I'm worried to death, and I wish that someone would sort this stuff out once and for all, and that he would get well and stay well, but what I really wanted to talk about today is how hard it is to take care of yourself when you're taking care of someone else.
I look at my lack of weight loss or fitness increase over the last year, and I get irritated with myself, and then I remember that most of what I've been doing for the last year is taking care of him. Or my mother, earlier. And it is just so difficult to focus on me when everyone else needs me to focus on them. I get some period of stability, and I start working on things, and I think about making plans to head back to the gym, and I start practicing new habits... and then everything falls apart, because it's easy to nibble on the cheese instead of eating properly when you're in a hurry. I don't "cheat" exactly... I hate that word... because I'm so used to eating in this particular way that it's not a nose dive into ice cream or something, but I eat too much and too often. And, surprise, I end up right back where I started.
Change requires application. Change requires doing things in a different way until they become habit. And when they become habit, it is not so easy to dislodge them when life unravels. The things I eat... food types and groups... are like this. Low carb is autopilot. But exercise and portion control are not, and neither are the thousand things that would help to make me feel better and less stressed.
I'm trying, though, in simple silly ways that seem to get derailed half the time. Yesterday I went to the store for a minute, and instead of going straight home, went to Starbucks for a coffee. Ordered a grande sugar free vanilla whole milk latté... waited a really long time, sitting in the drive through and noticing all the bird nests that you can see this time of year, with all the leaves gone... and they eventually arrived with a size smaller. Should have just taken that, but said so.... and the barrista came back remarkably quickly with a larger one. So I drove around to the parking lot and sat in "our" space... where we used to go to cool off and take a break when it was a little easier for Michael to get in and out of the car... had a sip of the coffee, realized that they'd just dumped more milk in the original coffee, decided I didn't need the carbs anyway and tossed it. Alternated between feeling smug and irritated that even when I try to do something simple to get a break, it tends to backfire!
Ah, well.... reset, start over again.
It's a beautiful, sunny-but-frigid day in upstate NY. My poor son, who has been betting on (and praying for) a snow day all week, in light of the bone-chilling temperatures, evidently isn't going to get one. I kind of miss the wonder of being a kid in this part of the world... it's always possible that every winter day just might bring the magic of a snow day. A totally free and unexpected day off. We should all get snow days, really.
Michael is napping in a chair, dappled with sunshine. And "dappled" always makes me think of this poem that my mother loved. My quiche is in the oven, and I'm sitting here doing what I always do, thinking.
And I'm thinking about food, which unfortunately is not a rare thing around here.
I've come to a conclusion lately, which really is a no-brainer, I suppose, but still... at this point, if I am ever going to get my weight down, I have to actively work on the behavioral things. At this point in my life, the reality is that I eat very well from a nutrition point of view, I don't do a lot of things that I used to do (like binge eat), and I am reasonably active, even though I'm still not back to the gym. But I don't lose weight. Barring something physically wrong with me (which seems unlikely), it's all about eating too much and too often. But it doesn't seem to me that I eat too much and too often because, well, it's the way I've always eaten (yeah, that really should tell me something, shouldn't it?).
So I started reading Judith Beck's book, which is really about congitive therapy and diet, and while I haven't gotten that far in it (partly because I'm in the middle of three books at the moment), it's made me think about just paying attention to eating. Paying attention to the difference between hunger and boredom, and all that stuff that you've heard a thousand times on every list of diet tips.
But here is the thing that I really noticed since I have been trying to be more mindful about eating. Eating makes me really anxious. I wolf food like someone is going to take it away from me, and I don't notice what I'm eating, and at the same time, I am profoundly anxious. Which, when you think about it, is the strangest thing ever. I mean, if you look at the things that cause eating disorders (of the overeating sort, that is), it's usually said to be about the calming effects of food, food as comfort, etc. And there is some aspect of rapid eating that genuinely is comforting, I think... it lets you shut off and zone out. But this shovel-it-in-your mouth, fast eating neither lets you enjoy food nor is... peaceful, I guess, for lack of a better word. And when I slow down and really think about food, I feel this lessening of tension, this release of anxiety.
It's all very strange really, and I'm not sure how to put this together with anything just yet.
It's the low-carb breakfast problem... cereal is pretty much out, fruit is hard, and sure you can have leftover dinner food... but mostly it leaves you with bacon and eggs. I think this is why there's this huge myth that Atkins is all about eating bacon and eggs and nothing else. Anyway, we've been fighting the egg battle here for a long time, because I (the not-picky person!) don't mind eggs in any form and bacon or sausage is fine, too. Michael, on the other hand, is not an egg person really. So I started making quiche... and, yeah, I know that quiche is bacon and eggs in disguise, but for some reason, the disguise works. Michael doesn't complain about it, it's a perfect thing to eat in the morning, and for the two of us, a quiche lasts 4 days, so that's breakfast taken care of, just reheating rather than cooking.
So I've been experimenting... doing what I almost never do with recipes, trying them again and again, fine-tuning the proportions, fine-tuning the taste, and so what I have for you is what I think is the perfect low-carb quiche recipe.... and it's easy to fiddle with or substitute things depending on how you want your quiche to come out.
This is a crustless quiche... that's the low-carb part... which takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it's hard to imagine why you would want a crust. Takes a LOT less time, too.
And best of all, it takes about 5-10 minutes prep time, and then you can go drink tea until it's done.
You will need...
2 eggs
2 egg yolks (or you could use them whole; see below)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk (any kind)
about 2 oz. Jarlsberg cheese, grated (can substitute an ordinary Swiss)
about 1 oz. Gruyere cheese, grated (can substitute more ordinary Swiss, but better if you don't)
2 leeks, white parts only (can substitute onion)
3 slices bacon, preferably thick-cut pepper bacon (but you can use anything. Use a little more if it's regular slices.)
salt and pepper to taste; a little grated nutmeg if desired
Preheat oven to 350 F. Use a 9-10" pie plate, preferably ceramic or Pyrex. Spray with a nonstick spray like Pam (this is not essential but makes cleanup easier.)
Finely chop the leeks. Snip the bacon into small pieces using kitchen shears, or dice small. Sauté the bacon until it releases some fat, and then add the leeks. Sauté until bacon is browned and leeks are soft. Drain on a paper towel.
While the bacon and leeks are cooking, mix everything else in a bowl. You probably don't need salt, because the bacon is salty enough. Put the leek/bacon mixture into the pie plate (spread it out), pour everything else over it, and bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before cutting.
Refrigerate leftovers... this will keep well for at least 3 or 4 days (we've never had one last longer); reheat about 1 minute in the microwave (for 2 slices).
There are lots of ways that you can substitute... onions for leeks in the beginning of the recipe is an easy one. You can also add mushrooms (be sure to cook them pretty well, though, because otherwise, they release a lot of water when baking and make the quiche soggy). You can use 4 eggs instead of the eggs/yolks combo... this will make a quiche that is firmer and less custard-y... we don't like the texture as much that way. You can use diced ham (or turkey ham) instead of the bacon. You could use more cream instead of the milk, which would give you a few less carbs, but I was trying to cut the fat content a little. I don't recommend using less cream, because it makes the quiche watery, which is an issue if you don't have a crust.
And I experimented a lot with cheese. I had two goals, great taste and NOT buying a lot of really expensive cheese for something that I cook about every 3-4 days. So... tried all generic store Swiss cheese. Awful. No taste. (But this is the cheapest option. Also, buy block cheese and grate it; it only takes a minute and is a lot cheaper.) Then I tried a really expensive Swiss variant that we had leftover from the Christmas Cheese Indulgence (moment of insanity when I bought about 8 very expensive cheese varieties at the gourmet cheese counter) plus Gruyere... fantastic. But really expensive, because both cheeses are in the range of $16/lb. After some fiddling around and compromise, I've found that the best thing is to use about 2 oz. Jarlsberg... which has more taste than Swiss but much the same consistency, is easily available, and is not that expensive, plus 1 oz. Gruyere, which IS expensive but you don't have to use that much. Other suggestions welcomed.
As written, this recipe is about 200 calories for 1/8 pie, and maybe 4 carbs if that. The carbs come mainly from the leeks or onions... and you could omit them... and from the milk. Definitely induction-friendly if you're an Atkins person. And not so bad on the calories, for a breakfast choice. Although a slice looks small, it's got a lot of fat from the cheese and cream, so it makes you feel full (for a loooong time), and all ready to start the day!
Not like I've actually done all these things... hahahaha, you must be kidding! Just that I've realized that trying to do a post about each of these things is totally stalling out, so I'm wrapping the rest of them plus some updates into this post.
Here's what I've got left to talk about...
5. Get my finances in order
Eek. This one is the "I have no clue where to start" one. I think we're going to have to shelve this until summer. By then, a lot of things should be more clear. But as sort of a backup resolution... I'm keeping meticulous receipts. Usually it occurs to me when we finally do our taxes (as in, October 14th, the day before the extension runs out...) that I should have kept better records. It's too late for 2008, but let's start 2009 by being methodical and organized about this from Day One. (Then maybe I can get an accountant this year; it's hard to do that when you're piecing a lot of things together at the last second.)
6. Get some more social relationships into my isolated, pathetic life.
This one is hard, too. I'm honestly not sure how to do it. But maybe I could start by being less defensive and less tied in to being resentful about what people are not doing for me. Maybe instead of being eternally annoyed that my aunt forwards me junk all the time instead of sending me a real email, I could just tell her that. Maybe instead of resenting that my best friend doesn't call me, I could just call her. Maybe I could start by being a little braver and a little less protective of myself.
This is hard.
7. Go back to the gym.
This is hard, too. Not so much because it's intrinsically difficult, but because Michael is still not able to do this, and I feel bad leaving him home. He says, go. He says, I will come with you and watch, if you want. But he says this when he's feeling ok. When he's not, it's all really frustrating, and it's even more frustrating when you have to watch someone doing something that you want to be doing. So I don't know. But I think that somehow I have to do this.
I have to think about how to make this work. I will get back to this.
8. Get the house organized.
I did something about this. I hired someone to come help for about 2 hours every week. I think... hope anyway... that this will help a lot. Just having someone else to do a few things once a week will take a lot of pressure off of me.
I feel very guilty, on some level, about hiring someone to do something that I think that I should be doing myself. I still have a hard time realizing that I truly can't do everything. I still think that if I just work hard enough, I can... and that it's some sort of failure if I don't.
And some updates.
It looks like my insurance company is probably not going to approve the antidepressant that I was willing to take... since it's the one that my smart psychiatrist sister recommended... unless my doctor can work some magic. I don't think that's going to happen. So... I think I'm on my own with this. But maybe that's not such a bad thing, or at least I'm hoping I'll think so after I get done being irritated and upset; I think I was kind of hanging on to the idea that a magic pill would make me feel better (and in the process, I forgot all the reasons that I don't really want to work on this through medication).
But long-term solutions come better to me through thought and cognitive strategies than through medication, anyway.
I got my hip x-rayed and so far no one has told me that my leg is about to fall off, so I guess that's good, and I need to think physical therapy. Which will also get me back to the gym.
Oh, and I've discovered that an average day is about 3,000 steps for me, the magic of the pedometer (although I don't think it's perfectly accurate). So I need to be tripling my motion, essentially, if I've shooting for 10,000 steps. Some of that will come when the semester starts.
Ok, enough dull introspection and problems. It's time to figure out the solutions.
It occurred to me today, as I was out battling all the stupid people in Wal-Mart who insist on leaving their carts in the middle of the aisle like they are the only person in the universe.... ok, that has nothing to do with anything, really... it occured to me today that it's been about a year since we really started eating low-carb.
It's been a hell of a year, with everything else that's happened. In some ways, I feel like I'm not exactly the poster child for a low carb way of life, because in the last year, I've lost (and kept off) only about 20 lbs... but on the other hand, Michael lost nearly 100 lbs. last year. And a way of life is just that... the way that you eat all the time, when you're "dieting" (a word I never use these days) and the rest of the time, too. It's long-term changes in eating habits that really change weight, not temporary things.
Anyway, I was thinking about what I've learned, and it's a LOT.
1. There is NO food group you "can't give up"....
People used to say to me that you get used to eating very low salt or low fat diets, and I kind of never believed them. And I hear people say all the time, "I could never give up bread." Or potatoes. Or pasta. I used to be a pasta junkie; these days I never eat it (maybe the occasional ounce of Dreamfields every other month or so), and I don't miss it at all. Same thing with bread and rice. When I started low carb, I used to salivate at the idea of potatoes... really, literally. We each had six tiny baby potatoes, the size of your thumb, the other night with dinner, and we both thought that was was too many potatoes, and we just weren't that interested. After a while, these just seem like things you don't eat. You get really, really used to it.
2. ... but it will take your head a long time to get used to this idea.
When I get very hungry or very low, I crave things that I no longer eat. It's all in my head. I still think of these things as the "good" things, on some weird level. It takes a lot longer to adjust your head than it does to adjust your tastebuds/stomach.
3. Fat is not your enemy...
I still have an awfully hard time convincing Michael of this... and it really is hard to wrap our head around, after years of being indoctrined in a low-fat, food pyramid world. But it's not fat that makes you fat; it's the interaction of fat and carbs when you have too many calories. And fat is satiety. When we at low fat, we were hungry all the time, even when we ate a ton of vegetables and such. Now we're never hungry... and we almost never fight about food.
4. ... but fat is not your friend, either.
Not your best friend, anyway. You can eat a lot of calories on a low-carb diet, but if you want to lose weight, you still have to create a calorie deficit on some level. I think that I am the most dramatic proof of this that there is. I have, as we all know, not lost a lot of weight this last year. Why? I eat too much. I eat too many calories to lose weight. But I haven't gained weight, either, despite having spent nearly all of the last year paying no attention to portion size or fat quantity or whatever. But now that I'm starting to do that, I'm losing weight. You can eat a diet that is not low fat without piling on the excess fat. Moderation, balance... these are good things in every phase of life.
5. People who haven't tried a low carb diet don't know what it is. Some people who have tried a low carb diet don't know what it is...
No, you don't eat only meat on the Atkins diet. Or bacon and eggs. Or no vegetables. Or no fruit, ever. Yes, vegetables do have carbs in them. Yes, some fruits are laden with sugar and are not that great for you even though they are fruit. And so on. One of my students told me that her roommate had gone on the Atkins diet and ate only peanut butter. What??? The misconceptions about the Atkins diet and low carb diets in general are do huge that it becomes tiresome at best to even mention that you eat this way.
6. ... and there's more than one way of eating low carb.
More accurately, there's a billion ways of eating low carb. I've read about every low carb book that there is, plus a lot of blogs, plus a lot of forums. I recommend Protein Power when asked, but when you get right down to it, everyone is different, and there's no perfect way of eating that works for everyone. It is easier for me to think of guidelines rather than absolute rules... and in doing that, we've adapted a way of eating that works well for both of us. There are things that we virtually never eat... bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar, tropical fruits or grapes, and just about any processed food. But we do eat legumes in great moderation; Michael eats a lot of apples and berries, and I don't freak out if he has the occasional Starbucks biscotti. We don't worry too much about condiments used in very small amounts, and mostly we don't count carbs. After a while, you don't need to.
7. Junk is junk, low carb or high...
This is my particular soapbox, but if you want to feel healthy, you have to eat well. Eating well does not include a diet heavy in processed food, especially things like Atkins bars and substitutes for high-carb food. There's lots of fake stuff out there. None of it is good for your body. Even though I have a guilty love for Splenda in my tea, I'm pretty much totally with all the people who say, if it wasn't something that people ate 500 years ago, it's probably not good for you now.
8. ... and so life is better if you cook.
I know not everyone is a cook or wants to be a cook or whatever. I know that there are time issues, and I know that sometimes the last thing you want is to spend any time at all putting together a meal. But cooking is a skill like any other, and if you practice, you get better and faster at it. I cook 2-3 meals from scratch every day. I am lucky enough to have a flexible work schedule much of the time, and I've been doing this all the time for nearly 3 years now, so I've gotten pretty good and very fast at it. And it is a lot easier to eat low carb when you cook. It is hard and frustrating to eat low carb if you are trying to do it out of the frozen dinner section, because there's just about nothing suitable.
The one other thing that seems profoundly true to me is that, for me, this way of eating has been better than anything else that I've done. Although I've lost little weight, I look better... my body has reshaped considerably... and I have more energy than I've had in years. This is probably not for everyone, but it's a forever change for me, for medical reasons, scientific reasons, and because it just works with the way that I prefer to eat.
Now, if this next year can bring some real weight loss and fitness increase, I'll be really happy.
4. Figure out what's actually wrong with my hip and what I need to do to fix it.
My hip/thigh/whatever has been occasionally just beyond painful since last June when I pulled something playing racquetball... although there have been bits of this problem for some time. It kicks off when I do certain kinds of things... push a grocery cart is the biggest one that clearly does it, but sometimes just moving around a lot, and certainly anything that twists it kicks it off. Very, very painful. I've been to the doctor about this a bunch of times; he moves my leg around and says, there is nothing structurally wrong here, go to physical therapy.
And I was going to do that... but you know, it's a time thing... yes, and that's an excuse thing, but true.
So Monday we went through this again, and he said, let's get it x-rayed, and Go To Physical Therapy. So, ok. I will try to get the x-ray done next week. I will. Really. And I guess that I will check out the physical therapy. Ugh. I am reluctant about this, not so much because I am reluctant to do it in general, but (1) I hate to make phone calls; I am stupidly phobic about this if I give myself a chance to be, and (2) there's a long boring story here about the physical therapy place up the street and how much Michael hates everyone there. But I need to do it. So... I guess I need to put some accountability timeline on this.
Try to get the x-ray next Monday since we have to go to Rochester anyway.
See what happens with that.
Call about physical therapy on Tuesday.
Ok.
3. Get a pedometer and shoot for 10,000 steps.
This is the easy one... well, the pedometer part. I got one from Amazon, and it came yesterday... I have to say that this thing is pretty cool... much smaller than the last pedometer I had, and the neat thing is that it will register in your pocket or purse or whatever, doesn't have to be clipped to your waist. So we'll see, first, what my average daily walking is, and then I guess we'll see how hard it would be to make 10,000 steps, which is the real goal.
I'm not entirely sure how dead serious I am about this... I mean, I kind of hate walking as a form of exercise... but I'm thinking that if I just try to go for upping my number of steps, then I have some incentive to do the little things like park farther away and take the stairs and so on.
"
2. Focus on thinking about what and why I'm eating."
This is the other hard one. I am not losing weight. I don't keep a food diary these days, so it's hard for me to know exactly what I'm eating from a calorie point of view, but I stay very low carb, and it doesn't seem to me that I'm eating a lot. So, why don't I lose weight?
I've been spending a lot of time over the last weekend watching fat shows. You know, it's the beginning of the year when everyone is stoked on the idea of losing weight, so every channel runs all the weight programs it can find (and, I suspect, gyms top out on members who will be there for a month and never appear again). Anyway, Discovery Heath has been running all its morbid obesity programming.... something I find a combination of bizarrely fascinating, inspiring, and depressing as hell. Michael and I have been there with a lot of the indignities that come with super obesity, and it is not a good or kind thing, but that's a whole different topic. My real point is that it is staggering how many really fat people say, "but I don't eat that much!" And then you see what they do eat, and you think, wow, you are kidding yourself. And, paragon of virtue though I am, at some point I have to say, maybe that's exactly what I'm doing.
The low carb way of life has been a great blessing for me... I feel better, I look better, I don't really gain weight... but at the end of the day, you still have to create enough of a calorie deficit to lose weight, and either there is something physically wrong with me, or I'm just not doing that.
Also, bad habit creep is coming back. Nibbling on things because they're in your hand. Licking the spoon. Eating the leftovers rather than putting them away (or making the dog happy!). And eating at night. Yes, I do get hungry at night. But I would probably survive just fine without that extra piece of cheese, wouldn't I?
So... what am I going to do about this. 1.5 things... the 0.5 is because I am not exactly sure that I'm committed to the first thing. The first thing is start keeping a food diary again. I have very mixed feeling about this because I tend to get a little compulsive about this, and stopping doing it was incredibly freeing. But maybe I need to do it again. Possibly with a camera. The second thing is, I've sent for the Judith Beck behavioral books that I've seen recommended a lot lately. And I'm going to have a shot at really working on some of the cognitive things.
I quit smoking years ago, and I mostly did it by learning to think of myself as "not a smoker." I think that same kind of cognitive trick might help a lot here. We'll see. I'll report back.
The trouble with resolutions is that you can't just make them, not if you really want them to happen. You have to have a plan, some way that you're going to put some structure in place to make sure that there's some chance that it will happen. Otherwise, it's not a resolution, it's a wish.
So I wrote down my eight resolutions, and now the question is, what can I do to make these things happen?
The first one, "work on happiness", is actually the hardest and most painful one. I was going to do it last. But it's probably the most important one... and so, well, let's be brave, I guess.
I have been, lately, just beyond unhappy. I have been crushingly, overwhelmingly sad in a way that I just don't know how to deal with (and I've had a lifetime of dealing with depression and so forth). It is becoming incapacitating. I get up every morning and spend two or three hours just getting to the point where I can do something besides cry. I think it's fair to say that this is not normal.
Michael says, well, what do you expect? Your mother died last summer. The process of grief takes time. And so on. But it's not that. I mean, it is that in a way... I miss my mother every day, and I am still filled with anger at the unfairness of it all. In some ways, it's hard for me to imagine that there will ever be a day when I say, "I'm over this now." Some losses you never get over. But I understand this. It's not my first loss. It's part of life. I can deal with it. If it were only this, I think I would be all right. But it's the proliferation of a thousand small things, not so much this one big thing.
It's been nearly a year since Michael has been really well and mobile. It's hard on him; it's hard on me, and it hasn't gotten easier. There's little to break up the endless medical problem after medical problem; we can hardly go anywhere, and when we have, it's most been a mistake. And I do everything. This is not a complaint... just a fact, and over the last year, nearly everything has become my responsibility, and it wears on me. I am afraid that these things will never get better... although I believe that they will.... and at the same time, I have to try to be the optimistic and encouraging one. And the weight of all of it... I don't know. I mean, I am not a complainer. But I have so little time to do anything that might make me feel better, and I'm so isolated, in a way, and the combination of all of it has, I think, tipped me into a kind of depression that's beyond anything I've experienced before.
And I have to do something about this. I've been trying to wait it out, but it's getting worse rather than better. So I think that this is taking me back to the place I've been trying to avoid, going back on antidepressants. Don't get me wrong here... I am not at all anti-medication; I was on them for years, and they are lifesavers for a lot of people. But let's just say that the end of my antidepressant experience was a lot worse than the beginning, and left me with considerable reluctance to try this again unless absolutely necessary. I haven't wanted to deal with the whole adjustment and side effects thing... and in some silly way, to whatever extent this is all about grief, I wanted to feel it, not have it numbed (even though I know that it's not the way that it works). As some bizarre sort of tribute, I suppose. And because I just think that I should be able to cope with everything in the universe.
But this is wrong. It's wrong partly because I keep telling Michael that he has to try medications that might help him even if he doesn't want to, so it's just flat-out hypocritical for me to be unwilling to do the same thing. And my state of mind affects him as well as me. I've started to call my doctor about this five or six times over the last few months... and every time I talk myself out of it. And that's the point of talking about it here, really, to make that commitment to actually doing that. Monday.
Things are not supposed to be like this. And so maybe if I could deal with the biochemical bits of it, maybe some of the other things that will help... the rest of my resolutions... will be possible.
I've been putting this off.
My adorable son, when asked about New Year's resolutions, either says, "I don't do that because there's got to be one holiday you ignore", or "I don't do that because if you're going to resolve something, you should just do it whenever." And, ok, he's right about the last bit.
But it's a little hard not to see the old year ending and the new year starting as a moment to assess and evaluate and plan.
Goodbye, 2008. You were an awful year for me. Probably the worst ever. If we could just get through 2009 without anyone getting sick or dying, it would pretty much be an improvement. It's hard not to be bitter, looking back. Very few bright spots. Probably the only one is that Michael ends the year having lost 102 lbs. in 2008 (173 overall). Impressive... though I have to say that even this has a dark side. He was actually more mobile at this time last year, which is just another of those endlessly ironic things.
And roll on, 2009.
There are so many things I want for this year. And I'm just going to write these down and think more about each of them later.
1. Work on happiness.
2. Focus on thinking about what and why I'm eating.
3. Get a pedometer and shoot for 10,000 steps.
4. Figure out what's actually wrong with my hip and what I need to do to fix it.
5. Get my finances in order.
6. Get some more social relationships into my isolated, pathetic life.
7. Go back to the gym.
8. Get the house organized.
I think just writing these things down is enough for the moment.
I don't think I've ever had a Christmas that was such a mix of nice and just a pile of things that made me feel irritated and resentful and frustrated.
On the nice side... everything got done. Christmas Day was pretty relaxed. My son spent Christmas Eve with his father, and I have to admit that it was actually kind of pleasant to be able to lounge around Christmas morning and not have someone pushing to open presents now now now now. And when he came home, he was delightful... his best self, not so much his surly uncommunicative teenage self. It was nice to see my father, who is not as unwell as my sister thinks. Or at least I don't think so. And Michael actually enjoyed having my father here, which is a rarity. And my big silly present for Michael was very successful and funny. Lots of nice stuff like that.
On the dark side...
1. Physical things large and small continue to plague Michael. Same story. Doesn't get easier.
2. This is, I think, me being stupid and petty and falls into the category of Things Better Let Go. I sent both of my sisters a very special sentimental thing, because I knew they would be missing my mother this Christmas. My sister said, "you always think of the special things." Yeah, I do. Because I think about other people. But who thinks about me? Most of the time, I am pretty ok with this. It is never a good idea to give anything... gifts, love, time, whatever... expecting something specific in return. Or expecting it in the form that you want it. I really do believe that what goes around comes around, that when you pay it forward, you get it back, one way or another. But the small and sad bit of me would like some of that back now. In a form I could recognize.
Just let it go.
3. Food issues (you knew we'd get there, right?)
We didn't have such a bad Christmas, food-wise, not really. But I have to say, most of it I really could have skipped, and it just makes be wonder when I will learn the following lessons...
- I really can't have bread in the house. If there's one food that I will just eat beyond all sense, it's good bread. It is better not to have it around at all.
- Things that I have always thought of as treats are no longer things that I like particularly. We had two indulgence things for Christmas dinner... Yorkshire pudding with the roast beef, and sticky toffee pudding for dessert. Both of these things have always ranked high on the favorite foods list for me. My mother used to make Yorkshire pudding only on Christmas (it's a popover-type of thing, if you haven't had it, sort of like a roll with an different and delicious kind of consistency). And when I first traveled to England, I discovered Sticky Toffee Pudding, an insanely delicious dessert if you like caramel-type things, a date cake covered with a toffee sauce, hot, served with cream or custard or ice cream. Not good things, either one of them, from a calorie or carb or just sensible food point of view. We had both. I enjoyed neither. I fed most of both to the dog. (He enjoyed them.) If you eat in a particular way for long enough, your tastes really do change. But it takes a lot longer for your brain to catch up.
- Eating this way makes me feel like death. It is not worth it. It is not so much about weight and fitness as it is wanting to just feel better.
All in all, I think that this has to be the year that I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I will finish this year at about the same weight I started. This is not exactly what I'd call a success story, although certainly it could be worse. And I've put in a great deal of time learning to eat (and cook) in a different way. This coming year needs to be the time when I put all the rest of the pieces together and actually get fit again.
Somehow the last week or so has gone by in a mad blur. No idea how exactly. But the grades are done, and the tree is up if not completely decorated, and some small parts of the house are sort of clean-ish. I'd be happier if it was about a week until Christmas rather than a couple of days, but that's always the way...
I'd be a LOT happier if the frigid weather + loads of snow + daytime sunshine wasn't causing huge ice dams on my roof. Which in turn drips inside the house by some magical and horrible process, soaking the bedroom carpet, soaking the mudroom, making me really irritated especially since this happened two years ago, so, yeah, I should have done something about it. Hopefully it will warm up later in the week, get rid of the snow, and we'll have a change to do something preventative.
But the great news is that Michael is actually feeling better. I have no idea why, but he's been almost his old self the last couple of days. Which makes me mega-happy... and his weight has gone down 30+ over the last 10 days as the edema in his stomach and legs has reduced (which kind of makes me jealous). He's now at his lowest weight ever. (Well, not EVER, as he keeps reminding me, but in this weight cycle. We'll start posting weight again in the new year.)
My father comes in tomorrow night... it will be a sad Christmas for all of us, with Mom gone, but we're trying. So now I just have to wrap everything plus finish putting together the most complicated practical joke Christmas present that I've ever given anyone... impossible even to explain... and hope that nothing goes awry. Fortunately, my father won't even notice if the house is filthy....
On the brighter side... it seems like Michael is feeling a bit better. He's still not doing much, but that's partly because his knees are still unbelievably painful from the Sleep Study Experience From Hell. (I am thinking that he should probably have x-rays, actually, although it's unlikely that there's anything big going on... we see the doctor next week, so we can find out then.) But he seems better. More alert. More himself. A little happier, although impatient as anything and easily discouraged.
One of the worst bits for him is that during all of this, he acquired a huge amount of edema... fluid gain in the abdomen and legs. He's lost so much weight in general that he has a tremendous amount of loose skin on his abdomen, and when all this started, zoom.... it all filled up with fluid. He gained about 30 lbs. in about 2 weeks (while eating almost nothing, I should add). And every doctor has looked at it and gone, hmmmmm, but no one has seemed particularly interested or bothered. But for him, this is a Huge Big Deal. I mean, think about it... overnight you get 30 lbs. just hanging off the bottom of your stomach. Makes it hard and painful to move, and if you're a guy, makes it pretty hard to pee, too, which is probably too much information. But it's this huge catch-22... you have to get rid of the fluid somehow, and that's basically how you have to do it.... but it's a little tricky. And painful and irritating to your skin.
Anyway, 10 of those surplus pounds disappeared in 2 days, and another 2 today! So this is a really good sign. Of course, I've been feeding him all sorts of herbal diuretics and so forth, which is helping, but one way or the other, just seeing that go down is lifting spirits. And his heart rate has been ok, if still a bit high.
So here's hoping that when we see the doctor next week, his iron levels are still up, and maybe he'll actually agree to try the other heart medication.... and things will keep looking up. If the edema keeps going down, he can do some lower-body exercise, which will further help it decrease... so, fingers crossed!
I just can't talk about any more of the dismal stuff for a while (although I think it's getting better), so for a change, let's have a recipe... and this is a great one.
The basis and inspiration for this recipe is from Jacques Pépin's Fast Food My Way, which is a fantastic cookbook for simple dishes, every one delicious. I've made this for years, and evolved it into a more-or-less low carb dish. But the beauty of it (see below) is that really you can modify the carbs, modify the fat, and still have something that's both easy to put together, quick, nutritious, and just great comfort food. (His recipe is Chickpea Ragout, p. 91, and it's a side dish. Mine is a one-dish meal.)
This is a very forgiving recipe, and thus the proportions are all pretty vague.
Chicken-Chorizo Autumn Stew
- 1 package boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 6 thighs. Don't use breast because it will dry out.)
- about 4 inches spicy chorizo (the Spanish style... a hard, pepperoni-like sausage, not the Mexican kind. I prefer the hot kind, which adds a kick, but you can use the regular kind if you prefer)
- olive oil
- 1 red onion, roughly diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
- 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets (discard any tough stems or dice small)
- 1 14 oz. can chopped tomatoes (I like the fire-roasted ones.)
- 1 legume choice... see note below... a can of chickpeas or a package of lima beans or butter beans, etc.
- choice of optional vegetables: fresh mushrooms, zucchini, fennel, etc.
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- about 1 cup chicken stock
- finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, if desired
Finely dice the chorizo and cube the chicken thighs. Heat the oil in a (preferably nonstick) large skillet (with a lid!), and sauté the chorizo, onion, garlic, and chicken over high heat until lightly browned. Add all of the rest of the ingredients except the salt and pepper and the parsley, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are done, about 1/2 hour. Season to taste, and sprinkle with fresh parsley if desired.
The prep time is very quick, and then you can pretty much ignore it while you relax and have a glass of wine.
This is a hearty and delicious fall/winter meal. Serves 4-6, depending on portion size and how many vegetables you use. As listed above, with chickpeas and mushrooms, 4 very generous servings.
A note on legumes: the carb content of this dish is almost entirely determined by the choice of legume. You could leave out the legume entirely, and it would be lower carb, but I think that they really add something... so I've tried to just cut the proportion way back. I make this usually with chickpeas, but lima beans are really good, and an alternative might be just a few green peas. (Suggestions welcome!)
A note for the low-fat crowd: We don't pay much attention to fat proportions these days, but I first made this dish when I counted calories, not carbs. If you go very easy on the oil and use about half the chorizo, diced very small, this is a pretty low fat dish as well.
Oh, and if you like your food very spicy-hot, a dash of chili oil is excellent in this (I add this to my bowl, at the end, so that the rest of my family doesn't gasp and run for the water!).
First, a thank you to everyone who commented on my last post... I am having a hard time not feeling unbelievably isolated, so it really helps.
Anyway, in today's update on what's becoming World's Most Dismal Blog... Michael went for this sleep study on Wednesday night. I had called ahead and talked to the scheduler for quite some time about whether he would be ok there... and I'd really thought that this would probably be all right. Which goes to show you just how incredibly wrong you can be. First, the rooms were not set up to be comfortable for anyone, much less someone with mobility issues. No comfortable chair. Nothing you could grab onto. A bed with no headboard and a flimsy frame. And, ok, I know that the idea here is that you go and SLEEP, not that you are in a hotel room, but... first you have to hang around for about two hours before you can sleep, and so it's kind of necessary to be at least a little comfortable. Then, after he was all hooked up and went to bed, the technician came in about every ten minutes because he couldn't get the electrodes working properly. This was pretty much like the hospital experience with the beeping monitor... how can you do a sleep study if the subject doesn't actually get to sleep?
By about 1 or so, he was annoyed as hell, and needed the bathroom, so he sat up and called the technician to unhook him... and then I'm not sure what really happened. I suspect that the frame of the flimsy mattress gave way, but I never saw this, so I have no idea. Next thing he knows, he's on the floor... and he can't get up. It's been a long time since it's been easy for him to get up off the floor, but it's always been possible. However, he's been so incredibly weak lately PLUS he has this 30+ pounds of abdominal edema that's making it hard to move PLUS there was nothing stable to balance on... Anyway, he couldn't get up. He asks the tech people to call the paramedics. They are too concerned about their electrodes to do this. They spend half an hour taking things off him, while he sits on his knees before they will call an ambulance. Eventually the ambulance shows up, can't get him up (I suspect that he had no feeling in his legs at all at this point) and take him to the emergency room... back where we were a few days ago. Eventually he phones me... it's now about 4 a.m.... and I come pick him up.
His knees are beyond painful. And he's shaken up to hell. And angry and discouraged. It's hard to blame him.
And I am trying to figure out what I need to do to take care of both of us. I know that things will get better. But it is a little difficult not to get unbelievably discouraged, especially since he is so clearly miserable. I know that I have to try to take care of myself... but how do you do that when the person you love is so unhappy and so uncomfortable?
Yay, as of 7:30 last night, we have been sprung from the hospital. There is just nothing like 4 days in the hospital to make you appreciate the joys of being home. On top of everything else, by the end, we were so seriously sleep-deprived that it was like some bizarre form of torture... more about that later.
And the end result of all of it... kind of nothing, weirdly enough. Why is Michael severely anemic? No idea. Nothing showed up on any test (no matter how invasive!). Why has he has this whole collection of weird symptoms? No idea. What are we doing next? Well, not much idea about that, either.
He goes for a sleep study on Wednesday night, poor baby... I really wanted to reschedule this, but the doctor convinced us (probably correctly) that it's best to do a sleep study when you're really tired anyway. The last night of hell in the hospital, they hooked him to a CPAP machine (keeps your airways open if you have sleep apnea) but also to a monitor with an alarm that goes off if your oxygen levels drop. Well, every time he really fell asleep, his oxygen levels dropped... and so the alarm kept going off about every 15 minutes, all night. Finally at 5 a.m., we insisted that they take it away and got a whole two hours of sleep before some relentlessly perky nurse woke us up a 7 for absolutely no reason that I could tell (not checking vital signs or anything else, just randomly came in to wake us up?). I have rarely so completely just wanted to swat someone. Anyway, so possibly the sleep study will correctly diagnose his degree of sleep apnea and resolve this, and that might help the heart rate issues.
And we're going to try to get life back together. And get him well. More about that later.
Hey.... if you're following along with this, and you want to do a good deed today, leave me a comment. Just a "I hear you." This has been a very long and grueling thing, this whole autumn and the steady progression of these physical things getting worse for Michael, and I feel pretty alone with all this. So... it would make me feel a little better to know that you were out there.
So, Friday morning the doctor phones, and he says (to Michael), I want you to go to the emergency room NOW and check in to the hospital, because with these blood tests plus breathing problems, I'm worried that you're getting blood clots. So we do. And that's where we've been ever since. It's been a wild ride.
And what's happened, really? Not, in a way, very much. There have been a lot of tests. They have all come back negative. Michael's heart rate has been really high, and they've been trying to get it down. They gave him three units of blood to try to deal with the anemia. And he has been sleep-deprived, and uncomfortable as hell, and earlier today, he was hell-bent on checking himself out. Which, to make a really long story short, he didn't do... but in the process, he managed to really make everyone furious with him, some of which is fair, and some of which is not. I went home and slept for a few hours last night, but tonight, I'm staying with him... I think that will make it easier... and so I'm expecting a rocky night.
The trouble is, he's a terrible patient. Just the worst. He hates sitting and waiting. He hates being hooked to monitors. He hates taking medication. And it's not like any of us are crazy about it, of course... but some people have a little more grin-and-bear-it tolerance. Plus he takes it all personally. Really personally, in a way that I can't relate to at all. I mostly figure that hospital staff are trying hard to do their jobs, jobs that are really not easy, and that basically it's mostly not about me. The peak of it all... well, peak number 1... was them trying to give him a new heart medication without discussion about it beforehand. I think that it if it had been the other way around... if the very nice doctor had explained it first... it might have all played out differently. But as it was, he was through the ceiling furious, refused to take it... and everything went downhill from there. He insisted on leaving. The doctor said no. He said yes. And this went on and on, with and without other people.
Eventually, the physician's assistant came in and told him his options, and said some things that actually made sense, and went off to check him out with or without the doctor's consent.... or, rather, to see if he could get the doctor's consent. And then we waited. Which gave Michael time to cool off. And when the PA came back, with all the discharge paperwork done, Michael was ready to change his mind and stay. So I went out and talked to the PA... who, unbelievably, was rude as hell, made it clear that he'd gone to all this effort, and that he was not happy, and that he wasn't going to do anything to faciliate rescheduling any of the things that had been cancelled. And was just totally obnoxious about it. Kept saying, "I'm not willing to do any of these things because he keeps changing his mind. I have done everything that I can do." I said, "You have not done everything that you CAN do; you have done everything that you are WILLING to do." And he said I was wrong, and reiterated the same thing again.
I am a pretty reasonable person. I understand that patient noncompliance is really a problem. I understand that this kind of thing creates tons of problems for all of the staff. I really do. I am not unsympathetic about this at all. But Michael only changed his mind because of what this guy said... and then he is an absolute total jerk about the whole thing. I am angry. Still. And hopefully I will stay angry for long enough to write the letter of complaint that I fully intend to write.
Anyway. Here we are, as I said. Still on one heart med. With three units of blood that appear to have done no real good. And hopefully scheduled for a colonoscopy on Monday, oh joy. At least, that's the notion behind staying here, to get that done rather than waiting until January as scheduled.
So here is my confession: last night, I was both so hungry and so upset that I stopped on the way home and bought a loaf of forbidden wheat bread plus some cheese and some chocolate, and ate most of it. No, clearly I'm not done with emotional eating. You think you've gotten past that particular bad habit... and things get bad enough, and it all comes right back to bite you.
And here is my hospital food rant. The food here is atrocious... but that's not the issue. When we were in the emergency room, I asked the doctor if I could go out and get us some food. She said, sure, but it has to be diabetic-appropriate. Then the nurse offered us the box lunch from the hospital cafeteria. Contents... two slices of turkey on a HUGE white roll. A container of peaches in syrup. A container of apple juice. And a sugar cookie. WHAT exactly in this meal is diabetic-appropriate? (Answer: the turkey, which was also salty as hell.) Every single meal in this hospital has been just like that. French toast. Turkey and gravy on white bread. Mounds of stuffing. Pudding. Sweetened juice. Absolutely unreal. At least now he's on clear liquids, in preparation for the scoping, so food ceases to be an issue, for him anyway.
Some years, it's harder to give thanks than others.
I'm having a hard time.
It's the first Thanksgiving since my mother died. A little over four months, and it's as raw as ever. My father is really not well. I am absolutely swamped with work, and I see no end in sight. And worst of all, Michael is only getting sicker, and no one seems to really know what the problem is. His anemia continues to be severe, his blood tests show all sorts of unexplained things, his breathing is so bad that we now have an oxygen concentrator, his heart rate is about twice normal... in a good moment... and he's exhausted and confused a lot of the time. Right now, he's gone back to bed, to sleep. Hooked to the oxygen, in a way that's all too reminiscent of the last few days of my mother's life. It's not the same situation, I know. But it's hard not to be scared to death. And it's hard not to feel desperately alone. Which, let's face it, I am.
I only make things worse by being frightened. I only make things worse by not taking care of myself because it's so hard to take care of me and him. And my son gets the short end of the stick, as always... he's at his father's today; I sent him there because I knew it would be a grim holiday here.
So. And now what? How do I put the pieces together? How do I see the good in all of this? How do I see the way through this and to the next thing?
I don't have the answer yet. But I will, somehow. And right now, I have a turkey to cook. Plus under all of this, there are things to be thankful for. I just have to find them. .
I have to say that almost at the top of my list of things that I don't want to do is start keeping a food diary again.
I did, for a very long time. I did it obsessively for a year and a half right after Michael and I got married, before we were eating low carb. I have to say that one of the extreme pleasures of low carb for me was that I felt like I could stop keeping a food diary, after I got the hang of it. And it just made everything better, in two ways.
First, it always takes me a lot of time. I eat almost no prepared foods, so all the components of every recipe have to go in there somewhere, and it can take ages if its something complicated. I can get around that with recipes that I prepare often... but that's not a lot of things. So it forces me to spend a lot of time and get obsessive about measuring and, all in all, put a lot of much-needed brain cells into an activity that doesn't thrill me. And I hate all the software, too, to varying degrees.
Secondly... although I suppose that it doesn't really have to be this way... it causes a lot of marital friction, or at least it did when it was "our" food diary and not "my" food diary, because I had to keep careful track of what Michael ate, and I am not that great about keeping my mouth shut about things that I think he shouldn't eat. Which is a whole different post, I think, the different ways that people relate to food. And I don't want to go down that road again; we have entirely enough stress going on already.
But let's face it. I am not losing weight at any great speed. Or, really, at all. Just bouncing the same few pounds back and forth. And I'll regain them next week when I go to NYC with my student team, if I'm not VERY careful anyway. I'm feeling fitter since I've been doing the Wii (more about that some time in the future), even though it's been kind of intermittent, and I've been eating a better balance of food lately. And everyone who's commented is right, and I do eat too much salt, and so on... and I know that I'm stressed, etc.... but at the end of the day, I need to do something to change the current pattern. And much though I hate this idea, I think that I'm going to have to go back to a food diary, at least for a while, and make sure that my carbs AND calories are where they should be. I think that my carbs are ok, but that really, I just eat too much to actually lose weight.
And so I'm just going to have to go back to doing this, at least for a while.
It's just a world of weight-loss angst out there. It seems like almost no one is doing well with their weight loss goals at the moment. And this time of year... in the Northeast anyway, you just want to curl up by the fire, hibernate, and add on a few layers of fat to get through the cold winter. (Ok, reality check...: we still don't have a fireplace, and it was 78 degrees in upstate NY yesterday, but this time of year makes me feel that way anyhow.)
I''m not losing weight, and I feel really lousy. Michael is not losing weight, not eating properly, and feeling really lousy. The theme here... general misery.
I don't think that this is the same problem. We used to eat pretty much all the same things all the time (yeah, Nina, get a clue... if you eat pretty much the same thing as someone who weighs nearly twice as much as you do, you are not going to lose weight). Over the last few months, we've pretty much given that up, for a whole variety of reasons but mostly because Michael's been feeling so lousy that the foods that he can tolerate are a small (and variable) subset of things that I'm willing to eat, plus some more carby things that I'm really not willing to eat much of.
My problem, on the whole is that, let's face it, I am eating too much, and I am eating too much fat, and I am occasionally just mindlessly eating things that I have no business eating. Let's take yesterday's botched eating attempts...
1. started the morning with smoked salmon and cream cheese on multigrain, high fiber crackers. These crackers are not the worst thing in the universe, but that's about 16 carbs right there, and usually I skip them. But this particular salmon was not the best, and it's really better on a cracker, so that was my "reason"... and it "needed to be eaten." Sigh. Nothing "needs to be eaten."
2. Came home for lunch. Had some cottage cheese and leftover steak that I'd made last night. This would have been kind of ok, but I ate about twice as much as I needed to. Why? No idea. The one clear idea was that I needed to have some proper lunch before I went to my student meeting... and that didn't work out at all because...
3. Went to student lunch meeting. Ate two revolting slices of pizza, quickly and like there was no tomorrow. I have no idea why I ate this. I am usually pretty good at skipping this kind of thing, but it was like a reversion to some earlier, more compulsive time.
4. Came home. Ate the rest of the leftover steak "because I won't be back for a few hours and I might be hungry."
5. Went and gave a two-hour exam (would I have starved in two hours? Very likely not.). Came back and had dinner about an hour later... pork roast and salad. Ate most of the crackly skin off the outside, which I have to say was really yummy, but nothing but a ton of fat.
6. All of the above doesn't include the cream in my coffee, and the other bits of cheese or whatever that I probably picked up as I was cooking. And a few sugar-free chocolates.
I am actually quite embarrassed to write that all down. I was not eating like this a few months ago.
I need to do some major rethinking about what and how, and probably most importantly, WHY I'm eating like this. I am eating too much fat... and, yes, you can of course eat far too much fat and far too much food, even if it's a low carb diet (actually, I did ok on carbs yesterday). There's just some point where you're eating too many calories for weight loss, and where you're providing your body with far too much easily accessible fat to make it burn the stored fat. I need to completely retool what I'm eating, because I am simply Not Getting Anywhere, and I feel just awful. Not surprising really.
I am not losing weight. Actually, I'm gaining weight. I am about 3 lbs. higher than I started the week. And I can't for the life of me figure out why or if I should be doing anything other than noticing that it's weird and moving on. The strange thing is that this weight gain has coincided with the last three days, which have been different only in that I've been doing the Wii Fit program.
I have a feeling that I should just be ignoring this and letting it sort itself out, but really... I mean, I've been paying NO attention to what I've been eating for months. And eating far too much, though still low carb. And my weight pretty much hasn't changed. I start getting my head together to really pay attention to this again, and what happens? Not only can't I lose weight, but I'm gaining. Arrrgh. I am just really annoyed.
Yesterday I ate... cottage cheese and some cold fish for breakfast, eggs and smoked salmon for lunch, a Starbucks latte, swordfish and broccoli and a few carrots for dinner. 2 glasses of wine. Tea with milk. Oh, and some Jarlesburg cheese that I was nibbling on, and 2 Russell Stover sugar-free chocolates. Carb sources... the carrots, the milk, mainly.
I just don't know. My short term plan? Nothing in particular, I guess. My important student competition is Monday, and there is just too much to do to spend a lot of time focusing on this, unfortunately. Keep up the Wii, and try to not get totally stressed by this because I have way too much other stuff to be stressed about at the moment. But I am really puzzled and annoyed.
So, I need to get more exercise. Lots and lots and lots. And I'm really having a problem with this. One part is a time thing... this is my seriously insanely busy part of the year... but that's a short-term issue. The biggest problem is that the kind of exercise that works best for me is a little difficult for me to be doing right now. I just don't exercise well at home. I know, if I were a better person, I would buy a treadmill or something, and I would do the billion exercise DVDs that I own. But I'm not. A treadmill would become an expensive clothes rack, and the DVDs are just getting dusty. I am terrible at self-motivated exercise. Put me in the gym, and I'm happy as a clam, because I'm there to work out, and I don't get distracted. Put me on a racquetball court, and I'm really, really happy. Leave me at home with a DVD, and I'll sit on the couch curled up with a book. I know, no self discipline. I should be able to do something that bores me out of my skull and makes me miserable for a lousy half hour a day, right?
I can't go to the gym right now, and I'm having a hard time fitting in racquetball. And it sounds like an excuse, but it's all about Michael. He can't do these things, not yet. And every time I leave the house, it's a slap in the face for him... it reminds him that he still can't drive, that he still can't walk really, that he is stuck in the house and I am flitting around like a butterfly (ha!). He doesn't say this, but I see it very clearly. And so he says, go to the gym, but I can't. Not yet. Not until he can come with me. Work is not negotiable, but this kind of thing is.
So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Can't do the exercise I want, too... lazy or unmotivated or intolerant of boredom or whatever... to just DO the things that I could do at home. So this week, in a "let's do something even if it's stupid" move, I bought a Wii Fit balance board. We had a Wii anyway (also gathering dust, I might add), so it wasn't a huge investment. And I've done this the last couple of days, and I have to report that this thing is really kind of fun.
So, here is a report based only on a couple of days of use.
Pros:
1. This is the big one for me. It's interactive. Every exercise requires some kind of paying attention... focusing on where your balance is, that kind of thing. So you have to pay attention, and there's something that gives you some kind of feedback on whether you're doing well or not. Those DVD fitness instructors never notice if you sit down and drink tea instead of following along! I really like this part, and I suspect that this is what might make this work for me.
2. There are "rewards." Do a certain amount of whatever, and you unlock new games/exercises. I like rewards.
3. If you are way out of shape, like me, even the fairly simple exercises really are a workout of sorts. I am sore. A little anyway.
4. There are a variety of things to do, and some of them are pretty fun. The basic step thing is fun. The balance games would probably be fun if I had any sense of balance. And there are four different areas... balance games, yoga, strength training, and aerobics. Some of these would clearly not be very challenging if you were already in great shape, but just about everyone needs to work on balance.
Cons:
1. What I said above about difficulty level. But I'm a long way from there.
2. Response time is pretty good, but there are a lot of screens you have to flip through. Makes it take about 25 minutes to do 14 minutes of actual workout time. Haven't found a good way to streamline this yet, if there is one.
3. I get the impression from other reviewers that there isn't really a great workout disc for the Wii Fit yet. Like all startup Wii programs (like Wii Sports, for example), there's a lot of good stuff here but some clear limits. As far a I know, the only other disc for this is by Jillian Michaels, and it does not seem to be getting good reviews, in part due to poor response time.
All in all... definitely worth it at the moment. Let's see where I'm at with it in a few weeks.
Sometimes I try to think about what the theme of this blog is, and I mostly think it's about trying like hell to get yourself healthy again all odds and in the face of a lot of really discouraging life stuff. It is hard, like my little Sisyphus gif to the left, not to let yourself get worn down by this stuff. Really hard. And the trouble is that health is not about one huge burst of effort; it's about day to day to day to day small incremental choices. It takes a lot of effort to make the right choices again and again, especially when it's hard to see that they're getting you anywhere. Sometimes you just want to quit and go get a pizza. Sometimes you do quit and go get a pizza. But the trouble is that you just have to get back on the horse, every time, because at the end of the day, there aren't any other choices.
It has just been hard here lately. I don't say this in the rest of my life because... well, I don't know. Because there's no one to say it to, I guess. Because I don't feel comfortable saying, I can't shake this ocean of sadness. Because I don't feel comfortable saying, life, at the moment, is hard.
Michael is losing weight, which in the grand scheme of things is great, but it's slow (although actually pretty fast by any reasonable standard). But it hasn't made much of a difference to his physical problems, not yet. And he is so discouraged because he's really no closer to being able to walk without terrible pain and feeling unstable all the time. This has only been aggravated by the rounds of doctors that we've been seeing lately... the regular guy (conclusion: Michael's iron count is really low, take some iron, see some more doctors), the lung guy (conclusion: everything is ok; it's just hard to breathe when you're fat), and the two doctors we see on Friday. He's tired of being poked, and the walking and getting up and down and up and down doesn't help his knee. He's just so low, and it kills me to see him like this... plus it doesn't help how I feel, either. I really realized this last week when he started taking iron and suddenly, wow, he was a little like his old self again. And I felt light; I felt like maybe I could cope with everything.
This week hasn't been like that.
There's no conclusion here, nothing upbeat at the end. This all will pass. I hope.
Michael: 443.2, -4.0, total loss since January: 99.7 lbs., total overall loss 170.3 lbs.
Nina: 280.0, -0.7, total loss since January, 22.2 lbs.
Progress toward 5% of body weight goal: Nina, 29% of the way to goal; Michael, 11% toward goal.
Have you seen the series of annoying Electrolux ads with Kelly Ripa? These have been high on my annoy list for some time, but the latest one, which is for a washer and dryer, has just maxed it out for me. It just seems to me that every message in this all wrong.
First of all, Kelly Ripa is frighteningly thin. Some people wear thin well, but she just isn't one of them. Back when she was a young actress on All My Children, she was very pretty, and not at all stick thin, so there's nothing that would convince me that there isn't an eating problem involved here somewhere. She looks all wrong, and it gives the ads an air of the surreal. And in today's society, if you're too fat, that's bad, but if you're too thin, you get TV commercials and the cover of fitness magazines. When are we going to learn that "fit" means "healthy", and that too far on either side is unhealthy?
Secondly, the whole "message" of these ads is that these appliances reduce your work time to zero so that you can skip around like a magic elf. I'm sure that I'm being silly here and taking this all far too seriously, but you know, even with the most fabulous washer/dryer in the universe (and I have to say that those Electrolux front-loaders look pretty nice...), laundry is still work. Not work like in it was in 1900, but still work. So is loading the dishwasher, emptying it, cleaning the kitchen, and so on (not that I think that Kelly Ripa actually does any of these things, so maybe she does skip around like a magic elf).
Thirdly, and this is the one that really put me over the edge on this particular commercial, the thing that these appliances apparently free up you time for is making massive chocolate chip cookies for your kids, so they can eat them while glued to the TV (hard to tell but that's what it looks like to me). Fine message. The way to be a good mom is to feed your kids huge lumps of sugar and park them in front of the television.
Sigh.
Michael: 447.2, +1.5, total loss since January: 95.7 lbs., total overall loss 166.3 lbs.
Nina: 280.7, -3.5, total loss since January, 21.5 lbs.
Progress toward 5% of body weight goal: Nina, 25% of the way to goal; Michael, -7% toward goal.
A weird week, all in all, partly because I was gone for a couple of days at a conference, and everything tends to kind of go to hell if I'm not here. So not perhaps as good a week as it might have been, although it's refreshing that my weight is down for a change. (Hey, at this rate, I might beat Michael in the 5% challenge, and since he has been Incredibly Smug, that would give me a certain amount of satisfaction.)
This week I just have to fly down to NYC tomorrow, back in the evening, and it's going to be a long day and very likely not a good food day, but I'll try. And then we get back to what passes for normal around here.
Mostly I've been thinking about all of the things that I do that are not exactly helpful toward losing weight. Which is a whole different post, maybe after I've had about ten more cups of tea....
This is kind of a restart point for us, so rather than posting weekly change (since I haven't in a couple of weeks anyway), this is just where we're at. Notice that Michael is still doing impressively well (I am so proud of him!), and basically I'm not. Oh well....
Michael: 446.2, total loss since January: 97.2 lbs., total overall loss 167.8 lbs.
Nina: 284.2, total loss since January, 18 lbs.
So today we are starting our 5% challenge.
For me... 5% = 14.2 lbs, or 270
For Michael... 5% = 22.3 or 423.9
First we had a protein shake... whey protein, almond milk, liquid vitamins. I know that this totally looks like an ad for Almond Breeze (which, I have to say, is genuinely a great product if a little pricey... low calorie, low carb, and gives you a little protein).
