Body and Health Update 6/26

I've decided to break this up into subheadings since I'm discussing different things:

Exercise:

I bought new weights yesterday.
8 lbs this time. I was finding that I could go nearly an hour on the stair machine with the 5 lb weights, and 90 minutes without them. Having a work out where the "cardio" takes 90 minutes isn't feasible. Though, it was fun; I watched the Lord of the Rings extended edition over the last week. Originally I wanted 7 or 7.5 lb weights but they didn't have them at Target. All they sold were 6 and 8 pound weights (I should clarify, they did have 7 lb kettle bells, that were more than $20 each, I just don't have the money for that). Since 6 is close to 5, 8 pounds it was.

With the increase in weights I intend to drop the time of my cardio back to 48 minutes (aka, the length of an episode of Fringe).

The stair machine from Wal-Mart is holding out quite well, despite a marked increase in the time I spend using it.

My work out has moved to 1:45 of plank and side planks, though I have split it up into 35 second holds rotating. I think I could pretty easily move it to 3 sets of 40 seconds each, but I found that a minute and 1:10 were pushing the limits of my attention span, the rotation of shorter times allows me to effectively distract myself. I have also moved to 2 alphabet sets of bicycle crunches. The first time for this increased amount was yesterday and I'm surprised that I'm not sore. My workouts also regularly feature 40 squats, 30 calf raises, and 12-13 push-ups in addition to the shoulder exercises I do with the weights while I am on the stair machine. I also have started doing a some squat jumps on the days where I'm energized. I have begun to stretch more as well, as sometimes I feel a bit stiff after long workouts. I stopped doing the high knees, they were good for my cardio level but drained me so quickly that I found myself actively resenting them, and the goal is to enjoy working out, it's not supposed to be mental "work". maybe I will try again later, but not now.

Eating:

I'm still doing the no sweetener thing, still enjoying it, still plan to do this the rest of my life. I do go through days or a period of a few days where I will crave candy/ice cream/cake/chips/croissants. I usually just end up eating more fruit, or pasta.

I've also noticed that a lot of my food cravings come from external food triggers/hunger stimuluses, which are often quite strong, and which just piss me off. I mean, really piss me off. People trying to manipulate me makes me angry. Being hungry makes me irritable. When I'm hungry and know it's because advertisers/businesses are manipulating me through my animal urges, well, it's not a good mood. It also makes me angry because people who fall pray to these incredibly powerful and subtle manipulations are villainized for it but the companies who do it are praised.

"Regular" American food (read; mac and cheese, pigs in a blanket, white bread, sweets, potato chips) has been giving me stomach cramps if I eat it, even though it is eaten rarely. If, by chance, I end up having two events in the same week (like I did last week, a dinner with friends Thursday night and then a wedding with a dinner Saturday night), it seems to be worse.

Case in point, I've been feeling gassy and bloated and gross all week. I think I'm beginning to develop an aversion to processed food. At the wedding I found myself thinking 'do I really want to eat this?' rather than 'Yay! Rule free event!'

Also, I've begun regularly taking vitamins, which only leaves  me nauseous about half the time I take them. I have learned I can't take them with breakfast, apparently an egg, a piece of buttered toast, an apple, and coffee is not enough of a "meal" to keep me from spending the next 3 or 4 hours swallowing down bile. Also, taking them at night is torture. So, lunch, which is undoubtedly my biggest meal of the day and the one I eat the quickest, is really the only acceptable time to take them (I say them because I take a multivitamin as well as one of 3 B supplements, usually folic acid, and a kelp supplement since my budget has restricted the buying of seaweed snacks).

Weight:

The last time I was on the scale, which was mid-month, I was 178. This means that I have lost (a little more than) 15% of my January body weight and that I am no longer "obese." I admit that I am hoping to be less than 175 when I move.

When I look in the mirror, I still see the same person. I still regularly refer to myself as fat.  I know it bothers my sister, who says I am not fat, but I think that her and I are coming from such disparate directions that I cannot explain it to her. To me, this makes sense; I don't change, the appearance of the girl in the mirror doesn't change. If how she looked/looks is "fat" than I will always be "fat." Part of my identity is being "fat." Why am I to try and find a new word that fits for merely "overweight"? Would any stranger be so kind? No. Additionally, I have no desire to join a part of society that would have rejected me previously (and, likely, still does). If I was an outsider I have no interest now in being part of the group.

I have been wondering recently what is likely to happen to me if my weight falls into the only-slightly-overweight category (1 to 10 lbs). This, assuming I continue with my present style of eating and exercising, is a reasonable conclusion at some point in the next year. I do not believe my discomfort with the privileged thin culture will have changed at all. At the same time, I do understand that there is a strong feeling of general distrust and animosity among larger folk towards people who are thin, whether they have "achieved" it or whether they were simply gifted with it. Will I find myself a true outcast or will I find that there is an entirely different sector of people, one largely ignored in the us vs. them war-on-fat?

But I digress.

Sizing:

In addition to having now lost 32 pounds, I also easily fit into a size 14. I can put on a size 12, but I am not a believer in if-you-can-zip-it-it-fits, and the bulge around the top says I am not yet a size 12.

I went through quite a lot of my old clothes in the garage and found that the smallest size seems to be a size 11, which is about a size 8-10. This was both when I was a junior in high school, and when I was on Crew in college. I think one can pretty reasonably argue that 8-10 would be my "ideal" size.  I also find it interesting that there was something like a 15 pound difference in my weight between the two times I wore the same size. Though I do wish I'd known then what I know about sugar now.

The smallest point of my middle is 33.5 inches, just above my belly button is 36, and the widest point of hips/butt is 43. Recently the measurement around my ribs seem to have grown, from 34 to 35 inches. I don't know why or if I'm just not measuring the same.

Sleep:

Sleep is still difficult. Even when I am utterly exhausted I find it hard to fall asleep without some assistance. I find it very hard to quiet my mind long enough for sleep to take hold, and I often jerk back in to waking just as I'm about to fall asleep. I often fall asleep around 1 or 2 a.m. And I am more than capable of sleeping 9 hours a night, which my body does every time it gets the chance.

On a lighter note, I have begun to dream of DC and they have been good dreams. This is very unexpected but leaves me much more optimistic than I have been, because I believe that my subconscious still believes I have made the right decision, in spite of my conscious doubts about my ability to make any right decision.

Family Health

I don't talk a whole lot about my family on here, mostly it's not relevant, but I wanted to talk a little about it today.

My father has kidney disease. It says in check mostly, but his weight is higher than his job would like. Around the new year he was given a nutritionist (he's seen her before for his weight) who put him on a "shake" diet. My mother calculated that they were having him eat between 600 and 800 calories a day. I think at the time my father weighed around 220. Well, being a man, he dropped weight very very quickly, and made weight when he was tested. I voiced that I thought this was a bad idea, and that he would put the weight back on. He said that your metabolism speeds up when you lose weight (interesting how my father, or is that all men, have very different ideas on weight loss and gain than women do) and that he looked forward to going back to "normal eating" when it was all done. Well, it was done, and he did, and he put most of the weight back on. I said nothing, because it's rude to rub things in people's faces, but he did mention that I had been right, which was vindicating.

I do have a point in telling you all this.

Recently I had a talk with my father about removing sweeteners from your diet, how I thought that was to blame for poor health, that I didn't think it was as simple as "calories in calories out," and that simply by removing anything with sweeteners and using raw honey sparingly and replacing the old foods with fresh whole foods I had lost 23(21?) pounds and felt great. He took this to heart, though perhaps not exactly as I would have hoped (but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth), and has begun to remove things with sweeteners from his diet. He has stopped drinking any soda, and has replaced sugar in his coffee with a bit of raw local honey. I'm very pleased. I believe his health will improve and he will see some weight loss. He has also been asking my mother about the specifics of my diet as she knows exactly what I'm doing. I am very happy to have had a positive influence on his eating habits.

Additionally, my younger sister has begun to consume more healthy foods. We live together so she is a constant observer of how I eat, and while her diet is definitely very different from mine, any change she makes toward healthier whole food is a good one. With her MS it's definitely important in my book to positively influence her eating/lifestyle habits however I can. Though, I admit that I spend most of the time feeling like I'm having no influence at all. Additionally, she has begun to take a medication to decrease her constant state of sleepiness/near constant sleep. She was very productive on the day she took it. I was impressed. I hope this med works out well for her.

Finally, and I think this is going to be the best, my mother. My mother, in my opinion, very likely has an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder. Ever couple of years she goes through a period where her body completely rebels against her, swelling in her joints, pain, exhaustion, ect. This lasts for an undefined period of time, and all the tests come back negative, until it fades away and she is fine for a while before whatever it is flares back up. My father, being the enourager that he is, always declares her dying at the beginning of these things, and goes on about how her health is declining and he will outlive her and have to find another wife and generally becomes someone I want to avoid at all costs. And I worry a lot, because she and I are very close.

Well, the most recent case involved her stomach swelling and her ability to eat foods being reduced to almost nothing. She was limited to mostly semi-solids or else have horrible stomach pain for the better part of the last year and a half. At first they thought it was cancer, then a variety of other diseases, but all the test came back negative. My mother also developed regular migraines. The did lots of tests, and concluded that she needed to "lose weight." That's it, she was having severe water retention in her stomach and visible inflammation of her intestines and stomach because she was 220 lbs and needed to "lose weight."

So, she worked out 45-70 minutes on her treadmill every day, increased the incline and the speed, took walks to the park with my father, and kept eating what she could. She figured out at some point she was only eating around 1000-1200 calories a day. She lost weight VERY VERY SLOWLY. When she was finally down to "not obese" she went back to the doctor. She still had the severe water retention, still had the inflammation  still had the stomach pain. Their response was "oh, we thought it would go away. Well, it doesn't seem to be killing you, so maybe this is your life now."

I have to admit that my mother's trials with the (sizist) doctors have developed, in me, a general resentment of the medical establishment.

Well, recently she got a new doctor, who set up new tests, took her off her old medicine, gave her a new medicine, and gave her packets of probiotics.

On Friday I shared some of an apple with my mother. Now, remember, she's spent the better part of a year and a half on a mostly semi-solid diet. She expected to have a severe stomach ache that night but at the apple slices anyway because she was hungry. She didn't have any pain.

Then she ate some pizza at a get-together with friends. No pain.

She bought a couple of apples and ate them. NO PAIN!!!!

I am super excited, stoked, that my mother's stomach might be healing, that she might be able to go back to a "real" diet, a truly healthy diet with fruits and vegetables and whole grains. I don't know if it was time, or this doctor, the timing implies the doctor did something, but I'm super happy. This is wonderful news, and I hope it continues; for my mother's sake, for her health, and for my sake, for my peace of mind as I move.

These improvements to my family members health make me very happy.

Lent Almost Over

Lent is almost over, but I'm not ready to end this fast. I'm ready to make it a lifestyle. As it is, I feel healthier, and if nothing else I feel more confident about my health. I also think I have more energy over all.

It doesn't hurt that since January 5th I have lost at least 12 pounds. I think it's probably more than that but I was waiting until the scale said I'd lost at least 10 pounds for two days in a row and then I was  going to throw out my scale (because health, not weight is my goal). The scale did this; it showed between 8 and 9.8 lbs lost for about a week, and then one day 11, and the next 12. Sooooo no more scale. I feel as though my pants have been getting looser, which I hadn't felt at all before. I assume this means I may have lost a little more.

Also, my hormones seem...better. My sister has a period every 21 days, which sucks, and my period had begun to follow hers, which sucked. Now mine is late (but I can feel it's going to start soon) and has almost reset itself. Yay!

Also, I did break fast once, (I had a cupcake at a dinner party) and had pretty awful stomach pain the next day. Not cool.

So, what I want to do is continue this; not eating any sweeteners except the occasional raw honey, eating less pasta/grain, and working out a few days a week/being active every day, for the foreseeable future. After Lent I will make the caveat that if I'm at a party or social function I will allow a little sugared food (e.g. the aforementioned cupcake) so as not to be rude, but will continue on with my no-sweetener ways.

I'd be lying if I said I don't hope to get a little smaller, but that is not my goal. My goals is the confidence that I am healthy.

I'm excited.