Food Angst and Holidays

My aunt should have owned stock in Diet Shasta. She's been dieting with every option she could find since probably around 1969, and she's still morbidly obese--she got fatter over time of course. That's a lot of options and there's a lot of trying and it not working.

Sure, she lost weight. She just regained it of course. See this post on research related to weight regain. Concise summary: "Nearly inevitable." My theory: Moreso the more fat you begin. Caveat: entire amount may not be regained (so, that's something positive).

It is her daughter, my amazingly artistic cousin, who gained weight about as rapidly as I did and ironically at about the same age I did (I never thought of that until just now), and who eventually took up cocaine as the only hope for a solution for her wailing grief and mortified shame about her body. Now she is on the federal prison diet. That didn't end well.

I remember when I was 18 I went to a big celebration of my grandfather's 80th birthday. Family had come from around the country for this, and it was the first and probably the last celebration of its kind. My aunt was frustrated because she wanted to eat some of the food she'd spent 3 days cooking for it -- the smell of garlic bread wafting through the house was knee-weakeningly wonderful.  But she was on this diet at the time which was mostly about drinking so much water it's retarded and dangerous.

And... I could tell she felt like everybody might be "thinking" that she "should" be on a diet.

She might be right.


When I was at most 15# overweight (I didn't feel overweight, but I wasn't as thin as is considered proper today), age 19 or so (this is the 80's), I went to my stepmom's parents' house for the Thanksgiving family meal. She has 3 brothers. The entire family (except the brothers, and her at the time) was diabetic. I don't mean borderline. I mean losing eyes and limbs and dying over it eventually. At that time, several people were alive and whole who aren't now, and they were there.

Did anybody make LC versions of anything for them? No. The idea was, it's a special occasion, you stuff yourself on food that will kill you and then use insulin to compensate. Don't get me started on People Killing Their Diabetic Family Members By Making No Efforts To Help Them as that's another rant.

So, we are all eating. I was mostly scarfing down stuffing and white meat turkey which I love, despite it is dry and tasteless, go figure. Everybody else was eating more food than you can believe a person can shovel in. Plate after plate of macaroni salad, potato salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, twice-baked potatoes, brown sugar yams, fruit salad, on and on and on. I was sitting there feeling concern and pity for the fact that these people were diabetic and all the food seemed deadly. I considered eating some yams (love 'em!) but then I saw the dessert table! I decided that I wanted to have some pie instead, so I go get a slice of cherry pie. And I am walking back to my seat with it when her youngest brother eyes me with disdain and says, "Not like you NEED that, you know."

I was mortified. The other brothers laughed. I looked at him in some confusion, because a quick look around the room showed me that aside from those 3 young men, there were only approximately 3 other people in that entire seriously overcrowded house that were NOT fat, more fat, or hugely fat, plus diabetic: that would be ME, my dad, and my stepmom. So why he would say this to ME, when I weighed about 140 or so (~5'6), in that environment, compared to everyone else!, was a total mystery. I ate the pie (after saying something quietly unprintable to him) but I felt horrible then.

So the thing is, maybe people at that family gathering really WERE thinking that my aunt "should have been" on a diet. Maybe she wasn't just paranoid. Maybe she'd lived long enough fat to know what to expect.

It seems to me that this is often the perception people have about anyone fat. It doesn't matter how well you eat, or how much of the time you eat well. If you are eating anything but carrot sticks when they see you, "Well that explains it."

I (thin at the time) said you know, given you've been dieting since I was about 4, and given you are not thin, I think maybe you should take this opportunity to just enjoy the meal you worked so hard on. I mean if this were a one-time focus maybe it would be different, but this is just one day in the middle of 15 years behind and however many years ahead, and I do not think it can be held to blame for your figure. 

Journal Trolls

This reminds me of the people who on the internet, will go into someone's journal (I've seen this happen with several forum buddies), ignore that they have been eating nearly impeccably for years, point out the times in their journal that they said they ate "a coconut cookie" or "ten chips with salsa at the restaurant" or whatever, and then say, well it's obvious you just eat like crap so quit whining about being fat.

You know, if someone weighs 350# (let alone more) they are not fat because they ate 10 chips with salsa or a coconut cookie. Most people on an eating plan, averaged over a week, are low enough on carbs and calories both to absorb 'minor' things like that. People do not get and stay fat because they ate 6 cherries when otherwise VLC. That's stupid. We're not talking about major constant violations of eating plan here we're talking about occasional tiny things that were merely unplanned; not even necessarily exceeding their ideal food count totals.

Neurosis and Food

At minor gatherings, like business trips or vacations, I have gotten up and left a shared public table to eat elsewhere, because it was filled with women who the minute they sat down, started rationalizing why it was ok to eat what they were eating because..., or started talking about nothing but fat, food, food that will kill you, disease, etc. If we ever meet and you want to share a meal with me, do not bring up the evil of food, or disease! WTF is wrong with people that they can't just have a freaking meal without such neurosis?

I see it as even metaphysically bad, like cursing your food while you eat it because you're focused on totally negative stuff.  I want to tell these people, either eat well or don't, but shut the hell up about it and let other people enjoy their food! I've actually said that before -- more diplomatically of course -- but you will not be surprised to know that people did not like me any better as a result... :-)

I actually feel if you take total responsibility for yourself, oddly you don't have all that guilt because you simply accept that it was your decision to make, you had the right to make it, and that was the result and you will live with the results of your decisions. It's a matter of fact thing.

IMO the great angst is not about 'the decision' but about feeling one didn't really have the RIGHT to make the decision. So people are wringing their hands about what they should have done, even while they are with every bite making the decision over again. When you truly feel your food is your decision to make, you can just make it.

Holiday Food

In major gatherings like holidays, I'm not saying (in the above example with my aunt) that anyone should eat crappy food when they don't want to, or use it as an excuse to blow a good eating plan. Actually I'm very conservative on that point because it's been my experience that "going off-plan for a day" often derails people for six months instead.

I'm just saying that ideally, a person would not do it, and feel fine about not doing it. Or, if they ARE going to eat it either way, then they might as well enjoy themselves. The whole big complex of guilt and shame and longing and sense of unfairness and misery attached to holidays because of food is just crazy.

The best weapon is to eat yourself stuffed on meat/fats before going of course, but failing that, I would much rather a person just ENJOY LIFE if they are going to eat it anyway: being miserable doesn't reduce the carbs at all.

Being so fat and worrying about surviving to see my grandkids has really made me realize how important it is to enjoy the moment. "Life is what is happening while you're making other plans," as that saying goes.

I think for people who are new to LC or who know that they have a problem with carb-up days, clearly holidays breaks aren't the answer. But if the need feels real, you can work on enjoying life by learning to make yourself lowcarb versions of what you feel most deprived of, or alternatives that are yummy, and eat those before going.

A couple years ago my kid wanted to eat carby at Thanksgiving and she was on LC with me. So we came to an agreement: we would make some LC sweet-crunchy-maple pecans, and we would make some "almond joy" LC candy, and she could have some of that instead. It was a decent trade. Beat eating 3 plates of potatoes and more, which she might have otherwise.



I think the psychological element of food is almost worse than some of the health elements.

PJ

Food and Love

I often hear people refer to their "relationship with food." Lately I've been thinking a lot more about that subject.

My relationship with food often verges on nun-like: as in, close to "none". I have to force myself to eat most of the time just to be sure I eat at least once or twice a day, and since my eating plan demands 5-6 eating times a day, that's really a problem. I have a truly successful day about a couple days a month.

I'm half convinced that severe obesity of the sort caused by starvation-response and then later finally eating, is some kind of half-anorexia, an eating disorder with opposite body-result but from a similar cause.

In the rare event that I start eating a lot more food, a lot more often, weight starts falling off me. So far, that's pretty well trackable. And the only time I make a point to eat is when I'm lowcarb. Though this last cycle, I'm doing pretty badly with this, and I'm guessing my lack of much weight loss relates to that.

It's almost like an inverse of the theory that if you are generous with giving away money you will attract more to yourself in some metaphysical way: when I'm generous with eating, fat falls off me, rather similar to how drinking a lot of water will get rid of water weight.

Now, bodybuilding coaches say this is the way it is: that if you eat protein regularly, and don't over-calorie, fat should reduce. They are all pretty clear that if you don't eat regularly, especially if you're eating too few calories, you'll reduce metabolism and end up gaining fat even on that small amount of calories. They emphasize heavily that if you want to save calories, don't skip the food, increase the exercise instead. I'm inspired that this is a no-brainer for so many, and I sure wish I'd known all this nearly 20 years ago. But, ok, I know now.

So why the hell is it so hard for me? I know now. So? Why not just do it?

***

Today I had 2.5 eggs and 2oz soyrizo at 8:30am. I was supposed to eat again at 11:30am. Instead I didn't make myself until like 3:30pm, even though I knew I was supposed to and had time. Nothing except the knowing my best friend would be disappointed in me if I didn't make some effort finally moved me.

And then, putting together something to eat, I was putting pork and green chili stuff in a little bowl for nuking, and wondering how little I could get away with and still get protein; is this at least 4oz of meat, I wondered? I think so, ok, that's plenty. As I put the container back in the fridge, I thought, how weird is this? Most people want to eat as much as they can, yet I'm the opposite.

I weigh between 380 and 390 lbs. My body should be screaming for 4,000+ calories a day according to Official Theory. I have plenty of days I'm lucky to get 800 calories if that, and I shouldn't admit that because my friends are going to beat up on me for my own good now, but I'm really having a problem eating enough to lose weight, as bizarre as that must sound. I can force myself to eat an avocado at noon and feel like that's just fine for the day.

But that's not fine. There is something wrong with that. On some level, my intellectual brain can see that this is just not... normal.

I just don't have any appetite. And even when I do have an appetite, I don't really "feel like" eating. I can feel that it is some kind of psychological thing at base, because it has that same subtle feeling that I have about situations and people that I don't feel like having anything to do with. This is subtle. I don't think I would be aware of this if I wasn't really paying attention and trying to understand.

If someone drops food in front of me, and I don't dislike it, I'll eat it. In fact, if anything I have almost no internal measure of sanity on that count: whether they could give me 3 bites or 3 meals worth, if it's sitting there and I like the taste of it, I'll contentedly eat it without any body-recognition of what is appropriate; my body doesn't say, "You need more calories," or, "You've had enough." It doesn't say, "You need steak instead of chocolate" or whatever either. The first time we made chili verde, which was low-carb, I ate 4oz servings of it for like 32 meals in a row. How many people could do that, let alone would voluntarily do so? Because food means almost nothing to me. If I'm ok with the taste, and it's in front of me, then fine, I'll eat it, who cares.

My body really doesn't have anything to say about food at all, except, "I'm not eating it if I don't like the taste of it." There's been times I've been feeling like I was starving, and surrounded by food, but if I didn't "feel like" eating what was available, I'd just walk away hungry.

***

I'm starting to think maybe it is a dissociative effect. I don't seem to have a direct associative-connect between the sense of hunger or fullness, and the subject of food. It's almost like they have little to do with each other.

So, for the last 15 years or so, I ate when it was convenient, if something I liked the taste of (read: carbs or sugar) was easy and fast. If it would take 45 minutes to cook I wouldn't eat. Why should I? If I was hungry I wanted it now, and if I was willing to wait that long for my food then I wasn't hungry enough to bother eating. It's a hilarious and pitiful kind of food-laziness that resulted in an entire diet of fast food and occasionally pasta or pizza.

I'd have been fat on that diet anyway, it's just that the seldom-eating, carb sensitivity, food sensitivities, stress and sleep deprivation and extreme sedentary lifestyle and so on aggravated the issue by a couple hundred extra pounds. If I didn't have those issues, I'd still be struggling with my weight I think, it just would have started nearer 300# than 500#.

***

But now I know. I know what it takes to lose weight. I know what caused the gain and what will help heal my metabolism. I have the power, for the first time in my life, to truly control my body and my life and my future.

So why is it SO HARD? Why does it take immense self discipline just to take 10 bites of something I like the taste of? I had food prepared ahead of time today. All I had to do was drop a couple things in a bowl and nuke it for 60 seconds. How hard is that? Yet it took guilt and love to finally move me enough to do it -- 4 hours late.

I would seriously think I need therapy for this, but the only eating disorder I know of that comes close to this is anorexia, and I suspect if I walked into a therapist's office and told them, at nearly 400 lbs, that I thought I was half-anorexic, that they'd just laugh and think I was in some bizarre kind of denial.

I can't afford therapy anyway. I might make up a self-hypnosis regimen but I'm not sure how to focus that. I'm not certain what core problem is sponsoring this 'behavior issue' with the food. I don't lack money, or time, or food, or knowledge. I don't lack a desire to lose fat as far as I know. I have a positive attitude about all this. And I like food -- I love yummy things!

But I'm just off work here today, it's nearly dinner time, and I've managed to ingest about 800 or so calories so far today, and that was with major effort. How much time do I really have to 'make up for' that and get a sufficient amount of protein and nutrition in my day? I find myself sitting here most nights thinking, "I shouldn't eat more than 40g protein at a time, but I need 3+ more meals today to get my protein in... well if I stay up till 2am maybe..."

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I wish I could sit in on another body for awhile so I could come kick my butt in aggravation.

***

I don't tend to be real open about 'allowing vulnerability' with other people, as a general rule. Is this my "food and love" issue? If I were more a touchy-feely sort that fell in love monthly, instead of a nearly nun-like semi-loner, would I have these eating issues?

I guess I'll never know. I just wonder if they are related. Maybe a self-hypnosis regimen working on the opening-to-love issue would have some food side-effect if so.
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A Difference in Perspective

My best friend was telling me how he perceives me very much like this:



Which was funny because a few minutes later he happened to click on my Tomboy Tough blog, where I was talking about the tragi-comic nature of today's workout, where I described myself, as usual, like this:



I cracked up. That is how differently we perceive me. He thinks I'm courageous that I am working on exercise no matter that it's so hard for me. I feel like... well, you know.

It's sorta funny though. I guess we all perceive ourselves differently than those around us do.

And of course you can tell we are both total nerds, with our Star Wars references. ;-)
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When A Picture's Worth A Thousand Tears

They say that a picture's worth a thousand words. All thousand of mine are very unpleasant, apparently.

I just got a pic taken of me during my recent Business Trip From Hell. It's horrifying. I think I want to eat something involving chocolate and pizza and never wake up.

I feel like there is psychologically some total disconnect between the me I think I know, and the me I see
* in mirrors (which I avoid)
* and store windows (which I avoid, not too hard since my weight makes me so shy I'm not real public-sociable anyway)
* and photographs (which I loathe to a degree words can't express).

Every time I see a photo of myself, I am shocked anew. Who is that hideous creature? Holy cats, how did that person get so freakin HUGE? Oh my god, you mean that's ME? That's what OTHER people see me like?!

Ye gods.

o0o

I have a best friend, who is a man. I love him. Ridiculously. All the weight I have lost is in great part thanks to his ongoing daily support of me, his consistent insistence that he adores me, and his encouraging me to be the best of whatever it is I want to be.

I'd like to have my womanly way with the man, the sooner the better. He is taking a vacation to hang out here for a week or two in late August or September. But it's hard for me to understand how any man can find even tolerable, let alone interesting, let alone sexy, the outer package of me that I find so unfathomably hideous.

I know they say you have to love yourself. I think I'm a decent person. I've got at least half a brain, and a good heart on better days. But I can't seem to get my head and my heart around what I look like. I hate that. I wish I could just kill that person in the picture, that horrible evil monster who took over and ruined my life.

I know. This is displaying some problem psychology. But that's how I feel right now.

PJ
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The Hideous Truth

This week has really been an opportunity to seriously re-think the effect that extreme obesity is having on my life.

This is going to be long, whiney and gross because you know, I just feel like being brutally honest about how totally f--king hard it can be to do basic things when extremely obese. For godssakes.

Supersize people don't talk about this stuff because it's mortifying and horrible. But I don't care. I'm going to.

o0o

I had to take a business trip. I need 2 plane tickets, company only pays for one, I gotta go to keep my job, so $467 for a ticket right off. My clothes are overworn and ratty so I buy a dress, $79+. Get the wrong size, the reship overnight morning delivery an extra $61. Of course the trip itself requires a lot of gas for the airport roundtrip, parking, tolls, etc. All told it cost me ~$670 to go to the corporate office for a couple days.

o0o

So I'm off to the airport. Unwilling to do the extra walking that checking a bag is going to require, I minimize what I take to a laptop bag with some toiletries and another rectangle bag with my clothes. The laptop bag is a big leather deal and it doesn't seem heavy... at first.

One plane wasn't too bad. A smaller plane, the two seats I had were relatively flat. The backs seemed relatively flat. My knees were stuffed hard against the back of the seats in front of me (not because I'm tall -- I'm only 5'6 -- but because my size means my legs are not really starting from the back of the seat) and my feet pressed against my bags. The flight isn't bad, and not all that long, although my legs, hips, back muscles all feel so sore after.

Of course we came down a skinny steep stairway out on the tarmac, which required I have an attendant carry my bags, while I walked down sideways (hips didn't fit moving forward), slowly, hanging onto the side rails. It's ok. I'm so used to feeling utterly humiliated by now that it doesn't matter; the people are at a distance, above and below. It doesn't phase me much. Take my bags and go.

o0o

So I'm at the Denver airport, a mile from end to end. I find myself at one end, looking at my boarding pass which tells me my connecting flight is about 60%+ toward the other. They have moving sidewalks down the middle for the larger planes.

First I'm tired. Then I'm really tired. Then I'm pausing because I'm having the typical exercise induced asthma attack, which severe obesity brought to my life; the heart simply cannot get enough oxygen to that much body fast enough.

This is partly because I am not exercising regularly; the muscle's use of oxygen improves when I do. Somewhere in the back of my head a foul-mouthed drill sargeant part of myself was yelling at me for not getting off my ass a whole lot more.

I continue walking. The laptop bag was way too heavy. I'm starting to sweat like crazy. I suspect my face is turning red. I want to take my time but I don't want to miss my plane. And by now I've developed two secondary problems, both of which are severe.

The first is that because my muscles are so overused, they don't want to work anymore. When I go to take a step, the muscle response needed to lift my hip, thigh, knee, calf, and foot a sufficient amount into the air and forward and down again, is only about 90% dependable. I'd begun stumbling when my leg didn't lift as planned, regularly. I have already reached the level of exhaustion that a thin person almost never would short of the end of a long marathon or mountain climbing trek.

o0o

The second is that a bizarre fat-deformity I have, had been getting more extreme. I wonder if others have this, and I assume someone must. In early January with minimal water weight, weight loss, etc. it was nearly gone (although the skin, sized for its former glory, then had all the charm of a testicle -- gross but true). But it had returned.

This stemmed from a chair problem. I sit all day. I sat on the very edge of the folding chair I had for work which was cutting off my circulation between the butt and thigh. My weight was too much to scoot back on the chair; it dug so deeply into the back of my thighs it hurt. I decided the circulation problem was dangerous. I bought a 1.5x regular armchair. This allowed me to sit partly back. It did mean the chair went to the middle of my thigh, but the cushioning of the armchair made it possible without the hard, blood-cutting-off edge of other chairs, and it was vastly more comfortable. Of course over time as the cushioning, overwhelmed by my weight, gradually flattened, it got firmer and firmer.

After many months of sitting on my armchair, a curious thing had happened. Nearly 500# at the time, I had pressed so hard all resting on my butt and legs, that most the fat from the back of my right thigh (which I sit harder on apparently), had been pressed a bit to the side and inside of my right leg. Eventually I had a sort of football shaped super-solid big lump of fat. Instead of being distributed around the back and inside of my leg (where it came from), it was gathered into a big fairly solid "bulge". If my front thigh were North, the bulge is southwest. It's half "behind" the thigh and half on the "inside".

When I'm not ketogenic (which is low water weight), or when I've been sitting on anything harder than a bed for even half a day -- this gets more extreme, larger, and firmer. If I drop water, stay on very soft surfaces and massage it, it loosens up into the simple fat it is, and if I am not sitting on it to continue the bulge problem, it begins to redistribute where it belongs. But since my job is sitting and I'm not in great shape so I'm sitting most of my time off, as well, it's never really getting to this curative effect!

It is partly between my thighs which means that walking with my legs passing each other is close to impossible. Imagine having a football duct-taped to your inner back thigh. It's in the way! Walking requires the legs together so this doesn't work; walking becomes ridiculously hard. It takes a ton of effort with every step to "push past" the major problematic interference. Let alone to do this without looking like a clown to onlookers.

Meanwhile, doing so starts to chafe the thighs until they are nearly bleeding, so there's agony to boot.

Then there's trying to sit. As it gets larger and firmer, it sticks out 'behind'. So if I back up to sit in a chair, it pushes the chair away from me. In fixed chairs, this means it feels like something is poking me as I back up to it, and I have to sit with open legs, positioning The Lump so it has room between my legs and off the edge of the seat. In non-fixed chairs, it can be like slapstick comedy, trying to sit down. I solve this by sitting with my back to walls, which I actually do anyway if I can (regardless of this). That way the chair can't back up to escape me.

o0o

So I am trucking very slowly on my way, when it occurs to me that having a coronary, along with an asthma attack, with bleeding thighs no less, in the middle of the Denver airport would contribute to missing my connecting flight.

Forget that I feel like I might rather die than continue to my gate. How I feel isn't what matters. If it were, I'd have stayed home.

So I ask at a counter for an electric cart to take me to my gate, which is still half a mile away, but at that point could have been in Tibet for how I felt about the distance.

It came, it took me, and I got to the door for boarding as the last person walked in -- just in time.

The moral of the story is, I wasn't in good enough shape to make a connecting flight, not if I'd had twice the time.

o0o

So next was a bigger plane. There are three seats across, two of which are mine. The seats are not flat. They curve up at the edges. I take up more than one seat. So this means the seat is digging really hard into me. The arm that "lifts up" does not sit behind the backs of the seats. It is slightly in front, which you would only notice if you were sitting against more than one seat, of course. Which I am. So the arm of the chair is sticking out and digging into my back.

It was impossible to sit straight in this situation, so to minimize the degree of pain, I sat leaned half-sideways against the wall/window, so the majority of my weight was on my right half. I had slightly more leg room, but still not much, so my knees cramped along with the rest of me. The chairs under me and the arm behind me hurt, sure. But I was ok.

When I went to get off that plane, every muscle in my body hurt. Apparently, holding myself like that for hours had the equivalent effect of sleeping in some terrible position, where you wake up and you can hardly move because every muscle and peripheral muscle in your body is whining about it. Not that I did not already feel horrible mind you. Worse, because I was sitting in a firm chair for hours -- in the same position -- and leaning hard on my right side no less -- my "bulge" of fat had now gotten even larger but more importantly, firmer.

It was now huge, and nearly as tough as my kneecap, and starting to hurt badly from the inside of the skin, because it is literally almost more than the skin, stretched ultra-tight around this suddenly bigger bulge, can bear. I know what will happen if this were to keep up for too long. The skin would hurt in a way you can't imagine, on the inside, and then little rips in it from the inside would occur. It would look and feel like a tiny soft spot, in the middle of which fat cells and blood cells would start to fill, much like an unusual zit. Gross. But that doesn't happen unless the skin is breached from the inside. And since my life style does not require I constantly sit on firm surfaces -- and until a few months ago I was ultra low carb, which means my fat cells were not swollen with water again until the last few months -- this has not been an issue in a long time. I hope to myself that the business trip doesn't make it an issue. Already the entire lump around the edges hurts badly. That's ok. It competes with how much the chafed thighs, amplified by the lump, hurt already.

So walking is now even more difficult to do at all, let alone without looking like Monty Python's "Silly Walk" comedy routine. The pain of every step nearly makes me falter. I am surrounded by people, though. So I put the standard, I'm-a-fat-girl-with-a-good-personality face on the situation and I begin my walk toward the area where a shuttle from my hotel could come rescue me. I must have looked bad despite my efforts, because numerous strangers offered to help me along the way.

o0o

Getting in the shuttle (a mini van) was another joy, since this by now huge solid bulge on the back-inner right thigh, combined with my difficulty in lifting my legs at all, means that climbing very upward and turning sideways and getting into the seat is easier said than done, but I manage it fairly quickly, using a sudden major effort, using my weight for momentum, and ignoring any accompanying pain or discomfort. What is a little misery next to 7 people staring at your efforts close up? I'd rather have the pain.

By the time I get to my hotel, get out of the van, carry my stuff in, get my room key, get down the hall to the elevators and then down the hall to my room (is it some cosmic law that connecting flights and hotel rooms must be nearly as far as possible away from wherever you start??) I am nearing the end of what I am physically capable of standing, despite immense personal will.

o0o

I didn't even mention that this entire day was spent pointedly not going to the bathroom since on the plane it isn't big enough I'm sure (I nearly got stuck on the train bathroom, with my hips so firmly lodged against each wall) and at the airport I didn't have time.

Let's not do too much detail on the fact that that when I am rather bloated as I was at that moment, and/or when the digestive process was less than firm, I'm not going to end up clean without a shower, which is why I tend to take a shower any time I do something serious in the restroom, which working from home allows -- and being anywhere else doesn't. I'm usually ok but part of that depends literally on the geometrics of it for positioning and reaching. I don't want to risk this rather disgusting (and acidic painful itching misery) potential of it not working out well, so I don't. I just hold it.

I go into my hotel, drop my bags, take my clothes off -- which was easier said than done as I could barely move, and had to wrestle my underwear around the by now giant lump on my leg -- and I stumble into the bathroom, finally. I take a shower and wash my hair. I stumble into the room, into bed, call my best friend and my parents, and fall asleep in the middle of the call with my friend. I am that wiped out.

The bed is soft. The pillows are soft. The comforter is soft. That was great.

So I wake up at 6am with the alarm. Whoopi Goldberg is a dj with some 'soft jazz' station. I think for a minute, how many people can have a voice like that? Nope, it's really her. I start to get up and discover that my body doesn't want to move. Apparently, the standard level of volition is not sufficient to force my muscles to respond. I feel as if my body weighs 3000 lbs and has been embedded several feet into the mattress for centuries.

OK, I tell myself. First, I will just pull my foot up so my knee is sticking up as I lie here on my back. It took quite some time. I had to re-effort and pull my foot up inch by inch. Every muscle from my foot to my neck hurt while doing it. I eventually get both legs pulled up. I lift an arm. Yep, every muscle involved there was sore too, mostly from carrying the bags and that funky leaning-syndrome the plane required. I sigh. I'm glad to still be alive of course. I think that I feel better than I did when I fell into bed. But I have a hard time remembering ever feeling quite so physically bad before.

By 7am, I am finally able to get my butt out of bed and start getting ready to be downstairs at 8am.

o0o

I can't decide. Should I eat? If I eat, I risk having to use the restroom before the day is over. What a nightmare. It's not impossible that could happen anyway, although my body, interestingly, seems to support me on this subject in a way that seems unnatural but wonderful -- on my former train trip, I literally went like 2.5 days without using the restroom despite eating three good meals a day, solely because I knew I couldn't fit in the bathroom. There is something to be said for mind over matter I suppose.

I decide not to eat and I don't have time by then anyway, so I go downstairs to meet my coworkers. I look a bit like a sleep deprived ghoul, but otherwise, the side effect misery of my trip so far is, I hope, completely invisible to everybody else.

I pray that my coworkers will not have the standard cultural reaction to my size. I hope especially that my boss will not. I know that being fat makes me de-facto "uncool" in the most major way.

I know that the quantity of makeup a woman wears is inversely proportional to the likelihood she will acknowledge my existence at all, let alone have a conversation with me (let alone without looking completely disgusted and opinionated while doing so, should she be unable to avoid it). I've had more than enough people talk through me, over me, around me, to have figured this out by now.

Blessedly, it turns out all my coworkers are nice, normal people, who don't seem to have any major reaction to my weight.

o0o

"I parked outside, not far" says the girl who is driving the mini-van for our little team. Of course, their idea of not-far when they are generally thin and carrying either very light bags or something that rolls, doesn't really match my idea of "not far."

I can barely walk. Every step takes weird effort because of the bulge interference, every step means my thighs scraping each other's raw surface in pain (I am wearing soft pants underneath my dress but there is about 4-5" of thigh before the crotch of them, which is what is chafing), my muscles are so sore that large steps are impossible, my heart's ability to get blood to extremities quickly is limited so fast steps are un-doable unless I want to have a pseudo-asthma attack in front of everybody, and my feet wail in pain with every motion.

No problem. I walk slowly, as if I am casually sauntering, and I slow down more as I feel my breath rate and heart rate start to climb to accomodate the oxygen needs. My coworker from New York, a tall thin beautiful blonde that has been my best buddy as we work via internet, notices and hangs back with me so it's not such a big deal. I make a note in my mental journal to pray for her to get some cosmic brownie point for having compassion and pulling it off in a way that seems casually unapparent.

o0o

Again I am climbing into the side of the mini van. I can only sit in one seat -- the one by the door -- so it's a good thing nobody else is my size. We park in a space equally 'fairly close' to the office, which is to say, not fairly close at all in my estimation, and I go through the whole process again in reverse.

Then we reach the front of the building. The front door is about two stories higher than street level. There are about 4 sets of steps on a long cement sidewalk to get in the front door. Oh boy.

In early January, minus water weight and with more regular exercise, I could have walked those stairs normally, at least half of them, albeit slowly. But not today. I have to do two feet on each step, like a little girl, to get up. Every once in awhile, a coworker looks back, which I see peripherally, and as if I don't see them, without looking at them, I suddenly make a herculean effort to take a step 'normally' so it isn't so obvious.

It occurs to me, with limited humor, that I am putting as much effort into "seeming" ok as I am into being ok.

So we are now in the lobby of the corporate office and it's time to walk to the conference room. I again put myself at the back. I walk as fast as I can, but I feel my breath and heart start to rise. By the time we reach the conference room, I hang back and don't enter for about 60 seconds, while I breathe as deeply and quickly as I can to get my body oxygenated so I won't have to do that in the room.

o0o

My boss had been told about my size in advance; she had an armless chair there for me. Two hours of sitting on it was very uncomfortable. This is not the fault of the chair which was decent. It's because approximately 400 pounds is just too damned much weight, period. It's going to be miserable no matter what you're sitting on, at that weight, unless it's a thick feather pillow. I realize my Battle Of The Bulge is getting worse by the hour with the firm surface issue going on.

We have a break after 2 hours. My boss brings in snacks. Thank god, I think. I've had no caffeine, no food, I've already put in more equivalent exercise than most people have by the end of a workday, and I really want some caffeine and protein because I want to wake up my brain and sustain my body.

She brings water and chocolate cake slices and big wrapped cookies. Apparently this is her idea of snacks to keep everyone going.

"Is there someplace I could get a Dr. Pepper?" I ask politely. "Ah, sugar!" she laughs.

I pause. Is she implying that chocolate cake and giant cookies are not sugar? What planet is she from? "Yes," I grin. "And caffeine, which is the important part!" She works out getting us some sodas too. Well, better than nothing.

I skip the snacks. Sure, I'd be made more alert by that sugar. Sure, I'd love to have a big chunk of chocolate cake. And then I'd be snoring on my laptop keyboard an hour later. And I don't even want to go into what eating chocolate does for my digestive results, which I was desperately hoping to keep on an even keel during the day while away from my hotel room.

Another two hours in the chair. By now I am dying to stand up and maybe pace a little. We are all going to a business lunch, which means I get to move, yay.

We walk back through the office, then down all the stairs, then through the parking lot, to the minivan. I saunter, and come in last. I hope I am not sweating too much, and I climb in the minivan.

o0o

We are having food at a Greek and Italian restaurant for lunch. This union of food is actually a pretty good idea that probably only a marriage could bring about. I drool over the italian food; pizza...... yum. I recall how I swell up like a fish from the amount of salt and gluten in pizza and I decide on a small Gyro (greek seasoned thin meat strips in a soft flexible pita, with some kind of dressing I'm not clear on and some veggies) and a greek salad. I eat only a little salad and give the rest to everyone else. My Gyro was really good. I don't dare eat more, since I'm hoping to not have to use the restroom until nighttime.

We pile back in the mini van and return to work. The parking lot, the stairs, walking through the office. I'm getting better at this, I tell myself inside. It doesn't seem as overwhelming as it did this morning. That's a good sign. Alas, by that time, every muscle in my body hurt so bad, and the chafing on my thighs, and the skin all around the bulge, and some sleep deprivation, and my poor feet, that I just felt BAD, period.

I honestly felt so bad that it seemed appropriate I should be sitting in a hospital bed. I couldn't even remember ever having felt quite so bad all at once before.

o0o

Another four hours, turned to 4.5, of work. I feel much worse by then, added to more issues with my leg's bulge and butt-misery from sitting in the firm chair. During all this, of course, I am working to be attentive, cheerful, and participative in our meetings, since that is why I'm there.

A few times, I realize that something I just said was a bit brusque, and I cringe inside, at how bad this must look to my boss and others, and I try to find something to say differently as a slight hope at redeeming my image. Working from home is probably part of it. But anybody else at that table who felt as bad as I did, I am sure, would have been 10x a rabid dog.

That is beside the point. Morbidly obese people just have to deal with the misery, pain, exhaustion, and still act chipper. It takes twice the work on cheerful personality to compensate for the cultural knee-jerk social reaction to fat. It's not by accident so many fat people are considered funny, you know.

o0o

Well it's time for the business dinner they have planned. Back through the office, down the stairs, across the parking lot, and into the minivan. I wonder, my god, how long is this going to take. How long until I can quit smiling, until I can use the restroom, until I can lay down on my soft hotel bed and pass out. We drive to a place in San Francisco. Of course there is no parking nearby. What was I thinking. We park down the block behind the building and walk.

The restaurant is like a bar environment. The seats are fixed wooden benches with padding and fixed tables, and further, they are set up on a little platform off the floor. There is no way I am going to fit in that fixed-size bench situation, and if I did, it would take me 5 minutes to get in and 10 minutes to get out and I probably wouldn't be able to breathe in between. Not to mention the sheer humiliation of it in front of everybody.

I ask for a chair, and they bring one. Of course, to meet the tables, it was basically a high stool. I find if I stand on the platform, and hold the back of the stool firmly so my bulge can't push it away, and I sit sideways mostly on the front left corner of it, that I can sit. Of course I'm not sitting, I am "leaning". But since it rather hurts with that much weight pressing on that small surface area, that's for the best I suppose.

I can't believe everybody is eating again. These people ate 3x what I did at lunch and they are discussing seafood appetizers, drinks and major steak and lobster dinners, while I'm still stuffed. The irony that they have decent figures and I don't, but that even on a daily basis I'm pretty sure they eat a lot more than I do, is not lost on me. I know. Kill your metabolism and reduce your exercise and that's the way it goes. It's not their fault they're normal. Don't resent the difference. Just find something to eat with them.

I couldn't perch on the stool for long. I had to keep moving it aside and just standing, changing feet (which by now really hurt), moving around. Fortunately since the table was elevated it wasn't quite as big a deal as it might have been otherwise. It was still embarrassing, but I ignored it. You do what you must. They didn't leave until 7:30pm, which was a very long day for me given how I felt. My coworkers and I walked back to the mini van and back to the hotel.

It's a measure of my exhaustion that I seriously considered leaving my computer at work and then in the car, just so I didn't have to carry it to my room. I'm an internet freak, I live on the net, so for me this is a major statement. But I dragged it up to my room. Used the restroom, finally. Took a shower. Set the alarm. Called my friend and passed out. So much for the computer.

o0o

Day two I actually felt better. Which is to say, I felt utterly horrible, but I was not worried that I was not going to be able to act normal anymore.

On the way in the door, I met my boss's boss, and my boss's co-boss, both of whom are pretty important to my position. I was so delighted, NOT, to meet them while lugging my heavy laptop back up the stairs into the lobby. I tried not to breathe hard as I shook their hands and smiled. I did all my extra breathing as I slowly walked down the halls to the conference room.

It was harder to sit that day though, because in case this obvious point escaped thinner readers, about 400# plopped firmly on any firm surface is essentially going to cause what amounts to bruising particularly at the edges of the firm surface. Not the black and blue kind you see on the outside, but it is definitely felt. Most really obese people are so chronically bruised they hardly notice it. I'm using to a soft surface all day so I did.

o0o

My friend and his wife took me to dinner Thursday night. He is a physicist that I met ten years ago by phone and online, and have known via internet since. His wife is a former big money business executive, who later went back to school and got a PhD in "Women's Spirituality," a degree I assume you can only get in liberal states. She turned out to be highly intelligent and I was instantly crazy about her. I wished I had more time to spend with them.

They asked if we could walk from their house, a block and a half to the restaurant. I tried not to cringe. Damn. As long as it's slow, I said, and so we sauntered to our food. Which was really good by the way but not nearly spicy enough for me.

The good doc wanted to take a picture of course, he is a picture nut. I hate pictures with a passion that by this point in the rant, I bet you can imagine. But he approached this with, "No matter what you say, I am going to insist on a picture!," so I realized that refusing would only be like some big social neurotic show on my part, and so I said, "OK!" cheerfully.

Of course, my horror at the output on the digital screen was just something I had to squash inside. That is the way I am. Sort of a thin-haired brunette, Star Wars jabba-the-hutt in a flowered dress, with a head that looks too small due to the size of the body. Well, you're ugly. Deal with it. Move the hell on.

o0o

That night in my hotel, around midnight, I was so exhausted I didn't even get out my laptop. I just went to bed and thanks to the soft mattress, was instantly asleep.

I had to get up at 3am, of course, in order to be downstairs at 4am, to be to the airport and check in by 5am, to leave on the plane at 6am.

I had lots of time so making it through the SFO airport to my terminal was not impossible, just long and tiring. The airplane was ok, although afterward I could feel the sore tiredness from the top of the back of my neck down to my feet, from my knees and feet being so squished against the chair in front of me.

I wanted to ask for an electric cart in the Denver airport again, but going home was a smaller plane so down on the lower level. "No problem," a guy tells me, "I'll get you a wheelchair." I laugh. "I don't fit into your wheelchairs," I say plainly, as I imagined, even if I did, the misery of some poor airport person trying to push me and my bags in a wheelchair. This would probably save me a heart attack but give them one instead.

He says, "Well it's fairly close. Go to the end of the terminal there, down the elevator, then it's just a bit out." Yes, just a bit. Ha. Ha. Ha. I did make it there ok. Only because I had a lot of time, was able to go very slow, and stop pretty often. The bulge on my leg had been restored to its former huge firm glory by the previous plane flight's seating, though it had been pretty hugely impressive to begin with, so it all took time. And looked odd, I am sure. But I got there.

o0o

My father picked me up at the airport. I didn't have to walk too far to the door or to the car, for which I was grateful. Yes it was hard, but it wasn't unsurmountable. I took my shoes off. I leaned over and ran a finger softly down the sole of one foot. It shuddered violently with the pleasure after all that pain.

I thought about how bad I've been to my body. My body which managed to NOT use the restroom until late night both days, solely because it wasn't convenient. My body which helped me survive this trip even at great suffering to itself. My body is nothing but wonderful and kind to me and I treat it horribly, make it suffer, and then gripe about its suffering like it's my body's fault instead of mine.

o0o

I went home. My little girl was brought over by my stepmom and I hugged her and we talked for a bit and then she went to play on the computer and I just passed out lying on my bed. I had to get up after 4 hours, as I had promised her we would go to mexican food for dinner and then watch a video, "Mama-baby date night" as we call it.

I could barely move, as if a little more sleep had just relaxed my muscles and they had no interest in moving ever again. We had dinner, watched a movie, then I went to bed and again, fell asleep instantly. I had no desire to call anybody, even though I often think I can hardly live without my best friend. I had no desire to get online, even though I usually think more than 12 hours away from an internet connection is inexcusable and worrisome.

I woke up a few times last night. Once I wanted to move and couldn't!

The next time I managed to move, to turn over. I swear it felt like every muscle, even teeny tiny muscles I didn't even know existed, from my upper neck to my feet, howled in aching exhausted protest. My thighs rubbed against each other, the chafing wound of them by now more like red rough canvas feeling than sticky anymore. A foot tried to curl up in a charlie horse and I fought it for a few minutes until the muscle cramp resided. I fell back asleep again.

o0o

Now it is Saturday. I am sore everywhere, I am muscle-tired, I am still bloated, maybe from the food or something, but I am better than I have been in days.

The cats are out of food. I need to go shopping. So I'm going to have to get up here and do a major walmart shopping spree. Walking. Heavy cart. Big bags of cat food, cat litter. Loading the car, carrying it in. It's a small thing, but I'm not looking forward to it.

I feel like I've been through four days of boot camp. Or worse. But it was just a couple days for a business meeting!

The complication and misery that extreme obesity adds to a life is ridiculous.

The bright side of this long gory saga is this: we see how well resuming eating carbs has worked for me.

I am definitely shopping today for low-carb food.

.

The Bon-Bon Theory

I'm a closet sociologist, I joke; 20 years of self-education, not formal schooling, but I consider the subject fascinating. I am normally involved with some rather 'alternative' topics, which by coincidence is a nice place to study a whole lot of alternative psychology, haha. I'm also very interested in internet communications and psychology, so online "fields" as I call them -- a general sphere of collected websites, forums, blogs, tools and shops that cater to some niche interest -- are always an fun exploration.

Lowcarbing has its own "niche field." It's a fairly small one, actually. There are several large forums, although the larger the forum, the more it is mixed with people doing every imaginable kind of diet including things completely different than lowcarb. I admit, that when I am journaling or reading journals about lowcarb, I feel sort of nonplussed about someone who is instead on weight watchers lowfat/ lowcal/ highcarb eating plan, or something else also very different than mine. I don't mind what people choose -- my best friend loves WW and I love her, so for now, I'm happy for her -- but it seems like it's pretty difficult to give any kind of useful advice to someone besides "Ra Ra" cheerleading, when the way people go about losing the weight is so drastically different.

I read all the lowcarb blogs I can find, and I have 15-20 journals at the LowCarber forum bookmarked to visit daily. Still, it isn't much new stuff to read for a person who reads fast and types fast and is used to high-volume internet activity. It's relatively educational, in a personality profile sense, though.

People who've lost a lot of weight quickly, seem to be the most fervent about the details of their beliefs about food. People who've lost a lot of weight but very slowly seem a lot more relaxed about it; of course, maybe being more relaxed is why they lost it more slowly -- or maybe being forced to develop patience, and to work on the variable details of their body, has made them realize it's a unique journey. People who are brand new to the subject tend to be much more insecure both in the eating plan and themselves but that's no surprise.

People who've been involved for a few months and lost some weight but probably not as much as they hoped, have more of a tendency to be outright rude to others, especially new folks, and I expect there is some of that "preaching it to make themselves better believe what they're doing is right" going on, which you can see in most religions never mind most eating plans. (Note: I'm not against religion. But sometimes genuine love and devotion vs. evangelism aren't well connected, as anybody who's spent time in church oughtta be able to see for themselves.)

I notice that thin diabetics, who eat lowcarb for that reason and not for weight, often don't seem nearly as supportive of or even friendly to the really obese as those who themselves are obese, and I figure some of the cultural bias ("I'm LC because I'm ill, but you're just a pig!") might be in there somewhere.

People who have been educated in anything health-related, even if the tradition is something like personal training (bodybuilding) which has always been more lowcarb focused than the mainstream, are often like anybody else I guess: they are certain they know it all, which is only a problem when several of them are in the same conversation (as they're totally convincing when in agreement or on a thread alone).

It doesn't matter what the argument is. The value vs. negative of dietary fat? Of calories? Of fiber carbs? Of sugar alcohol carbs? Of aerobic exercise? If this weren't low carb I'd say, "Bring popcorn and sit back and watch the show." Watching the debates can be an interest all its own.

The people who've been lowcarbing for a long time seem the most mellow yet no nonsense about it, for obvious reasons I guess. People new to it, tend to make it almost an obsession, but you see that in every field. And to some degree, when you're new and you really have to pay attention and spend time learning and such, it's almost needed.

I notice that thin diabetics, who eat lowcarb for that reason and not for weight, often don't seem nearly as supportive of or even friendly to the really obese as those who themselves are obese, and I figure some of the cultural bias ("I'm LC because I'm ill, but you're just a pig!") might be in there somewhere. This despite the fact that in my view, it'd be hard to find ANY severely obese person who did not have a specific insulin-related metabolic issue -- just like they do, although sometimes self-created in ignorance or by parents, and less recognized as a 'disease'.

I don't like thinking of metabolic problems as a disease, as that makes it sound hopeless, but they at least qualify as a 'syndrome' that exists regardless of your eating habits (though low-carb may help improve the situation). They definitely exist as something that you may have to behave in conformity to for the rest of your life, even if you lose the extra weight that made the problems 'apparent'.

The diversity of opinion even within the lowcarb field itself must be so confusing for new folks. On one hand people will tell you things like, "You must eat enough calories" (usually your baseline metabolic minimum) "or your body will go into starvation mode," and I am a living breathing example of a body that does exactly that. Some will say, "You must eat several small meals, rather than one bigger meal, to keep your system digesting, because fasting causes the starvation response," while somewhere else, people are saying that fasting and eating only one meal a day is a really great thing they recommend.

You'll get lectures on how fat actually helps take OFF weight and hence some oils each day are good, "find some way to incorporate them into your diet," while others go on about how you should minimize fat, something easier said than done on a lowcarb diet, since most protein has fat (and you will not find anything low-fat going into MY mouth; usually that stuff is in my opinion better considered a frankenfood).

This reminds me of my stepmother, who is diabetic, and who basically is supposed to avoid much calories, fat, cholesterol... interesting, since I've done a great deal of reading suggesting that the fat (and even cholesterol) with sufficient protein and low carb will take care of a lot of blood issues, not to mention butt-size issues, and greatly improve a lot of insulin issues as well.

Typical of course, modern medicine prescribes pretty much everything that will not only eventually kill her, definitely not save her, but will ensure she is appropriately miserable in the meantime. It is pretty damn difficult for people to do a diet that restricts nearly everything! (As I say, no eating plan helps if you're not on it. It needs to be possible, sheesh.)

There are an astonishing number of people with eating disorder problems in the LC field. I suppose there are just as many in WW and other eating plans, but perhaps because I've never known anybody with that condition, it always seems surprising to me. In particular the binging and getting fatter (as opposed to the binging and purging -- they are probably in WW instead, hahaha).

I gained over 200 lbs in less than 2 years in my mid-20's. During that, I worked 70 hrs/wk, commuted 4.5 hrs/day on the worst highways, and went to night school. I was stressed out and sleep deprived. I ate one meal a day: Del Taco at 1-2am, before crashing into bed to get up at 6am. Bad lifestyle? Wrong eating? Yep. "Gluttony"? No. "Lazy"? No. Gimme a break!

But this leads to the one thing that I see described, mourned, and opined everywhere, and that gradually has started to really kind of bother me. Not that I mind someone describing their experience -- at all. If Jane's experience was that she binged on massive junkfood and four McD's meals all the way to 350 lbs, well, that's Jane's experience, and it's good that she shares it, and supports others in doing so.

But I call this the "bon-bon theory" and to me it is one of the most pervasive prejudices against the severely obese. It is essentially the paradigm that says if a person is massively overweight, that it's obvious they got that way from sitting around eating like a massive glutton all the time... as opposed to some genuine metabolic problem which, if anybody else had it, might have had the very same end result. It is rather irksome. 382 extra pounds of bon-bons! Yeah... riiiight.

I think it's one of those things that side effects get confused about:

1. Gluttony will make you fat.
2. Serious insulin resistance will make you fat. The more serious, the more fat.
3. Untreated repeatedly abused food sensitivies can contribute greatly as well.
4. Stress contributes hugely.
5. Eating carbs before bed reduces growth hormone in sleep, that contributes.
6. Sleep deprivation contributes.
7. Insert about 40 other factors that contribute to weight gain here.

I gained over 200 lbs in less than 2 years in my mid-20's. During that time, I worked 70 hours a week, I commuted 4.5 hours a day on the worst highways in the nation, and I went to night school. I was massively stressed out, and seriously sleep deprived.

I ate one meal a day, not a huge one but more than a small one for sure: Del Taco (pure carbs!), just before I crashed into sleep at 1-2am, to get up the next day by 6am.

I did not know that a massive dose of carbs whacked your insulin levels, or that combining this constantly with growing overweight to obesity would create an insulin resistance issue. Much of my family deals with what to me is obviously IR, but they are oblivious... after 40 years of dieting for some of them, it's second nature to assume they are obviously lazy pigs.

Binging is an eating disorder. Not all severely obese people have an eating disorder, though most of them clearly have a metabolic disorder even if it is combined with an eating problem in some (not all) cases.

I hear people online talk about how they successfully lost weight, but how they gained it to begin with because they used to just totally binge on massive junk, and then felt bad, and then did it again, and kept growing, and so on. This is an eating disorder. I don't know why that should be considered normal. I don't even understand this really. Sure, I've eaten dessert I shouldn't have at a restaurant, or too many slices of pizza, or even 'whatever I wanted' when I felt my weight was increasing and hopeless to control, but my problem is usually eating at ALL.

After 15+ years of living on one meal late in the day for the most part, getting myself to eat several small meals during the day is hard as hell. It's a pain. It takes time. It takes planning. And frankly, since I have *trained my body not be hungry until evening*, it also takes eating when I am not particularly hungry, no matter what fire and brimstone people preach against doing that. When I'm around others (even very thin people), they usually end up commenting: how can you get up early, stay up late, and eat and drink like nothing?! I'm very focused. If I'm busy, I don't even think about food until nighttime, or unless someone drops it in front of me.

At times in the last 15 years, I have tracked my calories, and even "matched food intake with" someone I was living with. I steadily, though much more slowly than that initial period, gained weight -- even when they lost it on the same food. And my basal metabolic rate, at over 400lbs, is incredibly high -- like 4000 calories or something -- so you know, it seems physiologically impossible that if you're only eating like 1500 calories a day or less, that you would not be dropping weight at the speed of light. I'm here to tell ya, if I eat it in carbs, I am gaining weight. And since I'm a total carb addict -- whole milk and anything breadlike -- it was easy to do that. I didn't know I had a problem with those foods. I didn't know lowcarb was the answer. All I knew was that allegedly calories were the factor, and no amount of vastly lower calories than my BMR did not make me lose weight. At all.

I don't lose weight unless I lowcarb. Period. And even then -- the eating many small meals, vs. a few or even one bigger meal, seems to clearly make a difference. So, I can only conclude that for me, carbs are the culprit AND, a seriously overactive body 'survival starvation instinct' is as well. Even now, losing weight on lowcarb, I don't lose quite as much as the "calorie math" would suggest. I'm frankly getting pretty sick of the whole calorie-obsession in our culture; I recognize its reality in most cases, but it clearly is not the main criteria for metabolic problems.

Off the subject: I wonder if childbirth and infanthood issues could affect the body in some way. I wonder because I notice with cats, if they are malnourished as young kittens, they are completely distorted for food the rest of their lives -- they will happily eat popcorn and spaghetti if you let them because they'll eat anything. It just seems that some innate-response of the body to food is a bit distorted. Makes me wonder what infanthood issues may 'set up' for the body as 'survival instincts'.

When I hear somebody on a forum opining that everybody should quit whining about metabolism because the fact is if they weren't total binging gluttons they wouldn't be fat, I just sigh. (And on occasion, nobody else has permission to be fat; a person will be happy to diss others for being so since to them, "There's no excuse." These are the people SUPPORTIVE of others. Gosh. Hope I never meet the people who aren't!) Sometimes, I just can't help but feel my eyes roll up in my head.

I call this the "bon-bon theory" ... the paradigm that if a person is severely overweight, it's obvious they got that way from severe gluttony (as opposed to metabolic problems). 382 extra pounds of bon-bons! Yeah... riiiight.

Living with severe morbid obesity for years, and this after formerly being a performer, where looks and how people reacted to me were a big deal, has been a helluva education in "social stigma" and "assumptions" and "biases".

If I were black, with magenta hair and a nose ring, a lesbian, and an open pagan witch, I would not get half the bias I get for being so obese. (I'm just trying to think of groups of people that commonly deal with unfair bias, for that example.)

Obesity is the one stigma that transcends all colors, cultures and other social groupings. When it comes to weight, most people are not biased: they despise all severely obese people equally. It's usually not-quite-hidden, of course, in sneers they can't quite prevent, in active avoidance (conversations that go carefully around you, or don't even hear you), sometimes in instant hostility with no cause (such as women who project their self-loathing on you the instant they see you, as if you are taking on not only the weight they've been fighting with terror, but everything else they hate about themselves as well).

And a great deal of that bias is because of THE BON-BON THEORY: because people feel certain that when they meet me, and I weigh over 400 lbs, my gosh how I must be the most insanely gluttonous, lazy person alive. I can sit down to dinner with them and eat 1/3 what they do, and that won't keep them from critically eyeing my plate as if I shouldn't be eating that. They're completely unaware and unapologetic that they've just eaten enough carbs and calories for 2 days in a single meal -- if it doesn't make them fat personally, they're oblivious!

The body wants to eat its weight in calories, usually. And severely heavy bodies tend to need energy to lug it around more than smaller ones. So there are plenty of obese people who "eat more than a thin person would" -- and that's considered overeating. I consider that eating for their weight. It's eating enough to gain more weight that is overeating. I've seen fat people 'overeat' who didn't when thin; it was their changing metabolism that made them fat, and as they got fatter, their body demanded more calories and more carb-energy so they began eating more.

As I know from my experience, sometimes "overeating" can simply consist of ingesting one meal a day even at calories less than half the basal metabolic rate. If your body is thrifty enough and concerned enough for your survival, you could store carrot sticks and cottage cheese in fat cells just to be safe. You might not have much energy, but anybody obese can say to that, "So what's new."

Obesity is the one stigma that transcends all colors, cultures and other social groupings. When it comes to weight, most people are not biased: they despise all severely obese people equally.

Someday, just as an experiment, I'd like to rig a wetsuit to add about 300lbs to someone's body. Put it on anybody, and then say, "Alrighty then! Go about your day." And watch how easy it is NOT to function with that much weight, how exhausting the smallest things are.

Recently I bought a pair of tennis shoes; finally, shopping in the men's dept., I found some that were wide enough in side and toe-box to fit me. I'd been wearing slip-on shoes, zero padding or support, for years. I didn't realize until I began wearing the shoes, that when I was not wearing them, I was walking normally -- that is to say, I was "slowly hobbling," with every step in major pain, especially if I'd had to spend any time walking on hard floors (say, shopping at walmart). I didn't realize how MUCH pain I was in with every step until I got shoes, and enough of it went away to make me aware of it.

Add that, and chafed-to-bloody thighs and under-breast areas, and other really charming side-effects of severe obesity, and nobody oughtta be wondering why the severely obese are not more active. Most of them don't even want to MOVE. Any of my thin friends, if they had the conditions of raw skin I've had over the years, they not only wouldn't be walking around shopping trying to pretend they weren't in pain, they'd be in ER! They'd be off work, well bandaged, getting major sympathy from friends. But no, when the conditions are a side effect of fat, that humiliating condition, people won't admit to it. They will just hobble, and walk slowly trying not to move their legs much, or try not to move too much lest a bra rub an already raw and bloody chafing area, and maybe even cause them to embarrass themselves by crying out in pain in public.

I've *gained* weight while eating less than half my BMR in calories and doing aerobics. You can ruin your insulin and metabolism, and I guess I did. Now, I resent being considered a lazy pig. That is not always the cause of obesity. It's a horrible prejudice. Lowcarb is the ONLY thing that my body responds to for weight loss. I could cry for not finding it 15 years earlier. But I have it now.

So I guess you might say, that being really obese is hell enough. People -- whether fat, thin, formerly-fat, or what, who add to that daily unjoy extensive public opinions about how, 'come on, they know, they were really a pig and it made them fat so most others who are really fat are just pigs too, fess up y'all!' -- sigh. I don't say much (and nothing in those areas) because I respect everybody's right to say what they think, and especially to talk about their own experience.

But it is a little frustrating that it seems to just perpetuate the bon-bon theory in the world at large, and to even see it IN the lowcarb field, where more recognition of insulin and other metabolic issues exists than anywhere, is such a bummer.

I am currently tracking my weight, my calories, my carbs, my protein, and for 18 days straight I have lost half a pound a day. According to my basal metabolic rate, compared to calories, I should be losing twice that much. And I've eaten the calories I eat now without low carb and still gained weight. So obviously, it is not about calories or food ingestion in SOME cases.

Binging is an eating disorder. Not all severely obese people have an eating disorder, though most of them clearly have a metabolic disorder even if it is combined with an eating problem in some cases. Yes, it's fair to call "binging made them fat" a bit of a 'generality'.

But as long as an entire class of people are sneered about, dissed, etc. based on a "generality," it is still plain and simple, PREJUDICE.

Which frankly is pretty lousy no matter what it's about.

Hmmn. I think this is my first rant on this blog! Heh. Now it's "real." ;-)
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Pushing the Plow

There is no time like the present, as they say.

It helps to realize the present is a gift indeed. The point of power is NOW, as Seth once said.

Today and yesterday I've run into the much more mundane side of my eating plan (don't say diet). Coincidentally (is there such thing really?), I've also gotten some great advice spontaneously from a couple others just at the very time I needed it most, about how to deal with it all even when the chips are down. Not that we would dream of eating chips, hahaha. (Thanks you guys.)

I've always thought that the big things in life were the easier things. You know, give me the do-or-die challenges, I'll bleed for the cause, no problem. I was the kind of teen that casually read the whole textbook in the first two days, aced the tests through the term -- and nearly failed for a lack of homework points (in part caused by reading Robert Heinlein et al. through the rest of the course). I think in some respects this sums up my life in many ways. I love big jobs and big tests. It's the long term stuff that makes me groan.

The real work of life is the day in, day out, seemingly endless stick-to-it-ness that defines "persistence" and "consistency." Those things are so much harder. The dogged day-by-freakin-day of it. It doesn't matter if we're talking about working on an eating plan or working on building a boat, working on a talent/skill or working on being a good parent. The toughest works in life for me are not the gigantic challenges to courage, competence or creativity that come along sometimes, but the death by a million papercuts of getting up and 'dealing with' it, whatever IT is, every day ... by endless day.


I always admired pioneer women. I always wondered what was in it for them. Work insanely hard through childhood, marry young, have too many kids, be essentially a slave from dawn till dusk with the kids and house and farm and food and usually die in childbirth. Nothing against men, but I think if it had been up to men to be that stoic our whole civilization would have died out before it even began. The ability to do the long-term shouldering of the drudgery of daily life and still be wily in bed and happy at holidays and sweet for the little ones is a distinctive quality of humanity of either gender, but throughout history, women have really borne the pain of it, in more ways than one. Sometimes when I am whining about feeling like I spend all my daily minutes on kid, house, food, work, and have no time left for me, for "a life" as I call it, I think about what my life would have been like born 200 years sooner. Or even 100 years sooner. Or for that matter, even 50 years sooner! All in all, I guess I have it pretty easy.


When you turn off the volume from all the philosophy and all the hype and enthusiasm about anything, including the great enthusiasm many share (and thank goodness for that!) about a shared eating plan, you find yourself standing in the deep puddle of The Now. Every moment is a decision. To eat, not to eat. What to eat. Even how to eat. Every day is a new start; is the first day of the rest of your life. Every meal is a chance to confirm your intentions for yourself vs. undermine your own confidence. There is no such thing as history except in our heads. In the real world, it is always the NOW. Decision is always in your court, every moment.

And some days, the decision has to be just to keep on keeping on. Even when nothing is going right in your life or on your scale. Even when nothing sounds good, when you're out of half your ingredients, when you haven't time to cook a meal, when you're exhausted, when it would be so damn easy to walk right across the street and have Taco Bell or McDonalds instead. When you stand in front of your open refrigerator until your eyeballs are getting frostbite and still nothing looks or sounds good, but knowing that maybe for your metabolism, skipping meals packs on pounds, and you better find something no matter how uninspiring. Consider it body-parts in teamwork: you gotta get it down your throat for the sake of your thighs.

When you are not inspired, when the scale makes you want to cry, when your journal buddies are ignoring you, when it seems like the world keeps going around and every day you just have another day of the same damn foods you've been boring yourself into culinary comatose with... you just have to be stoic. We are the pioneers of the brand new territory of our own potential. We are the frontiersmen of what we CAN be, if we can focus not on what we fear we might be lost in eternally, but on what we dream we could be eventually, and we start by being that, acting as-if, right NOW.

Every decision in the Now wears a groove in our forever.

Every moment is now. Right now, reading this, you are in the NOW. The present is the only place where you can change your life: what awesome opportunity! This is your point of power, of decision, of inspiration -- and yes, sometimes, of putting your shoulder into it and plodding on another mile when you already feel like you're worn to the bone. Sometimes, just eating another freakin egg or salad feels like getting up at dawn to push the plow. But we don't have to look at the road behind or the years ahead. We don't have to look at every food we've had and will have. Narrow the focus to the present: life is only the small segment of momentary awareness we call the NOW.

If I can start at 482 pounds and some days be crazy-weary over food and want to hide my head about the scope of my journey, I think other people can start wherever they are and survive the down days too. We're a stoic sisterhood (and brotherhood) of people who've pushed the plow of eating-plan determination in the ever-present Now long enough to know it's worth it. I will make good decisions, because it's me in control of making them, because living in the present allows me to change my life.

Every good decision we make wears a neural pathway in favor of our tenacity, in favor of our determination. Every decision in the Now wears a groove in our forever. "Be here, now," as the Eastern sages say: every moment is now, and the now is always.

I'll push the plow another day.

There is no time like the present... and the present is a gift indeed.
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Words of Wisdom

To cheer myself up a bit I visited a dozen sites for "inspirational quotes", thinking of only "the journey to better health" (weight loss, exercise, lowcarb, etc.) and in that mode, collected some quotes I liked. I thought I'd share them.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

-- Epictetus

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

-- Michelangelo

You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.

-- Steve Garvey

You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.

-- Booker T. Washington

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

-- Zig Ziglar

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.

-- Walter Elliott

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

-- Benjamin Franklin

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

-- George Bernard Shaw

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

-- John Wooden

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

-- Albert Schweitzer

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.

-- Lowell Thomas

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

-- Dale Carnegie

You can't fly a kite unless you go against the wind and have a weight to keep it from turning a somersault. The same with man. No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and is prepared to assume responsibilities.

-- William J.H. Boetcker

The man of character finds an especial attractiveness in difficulty since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

-- Charles de Gaulle

The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

-- W.H. Murray

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

-- Alexander Graham Bell

BUT probably the most inspiration thing is something I thought of that a friend once said to me:

Whether you are on a health program or not, a year from now, you're still going to be a year older. A year older. You are still going to be a year older. Do you want to see that new year healthier or not?

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What Can I Do for Me Today?

Today I've been fighting the worst mood I've been in for a long time.

Bad moods in my world are always spawned by pity-me parties, of course. And nearly always relate to human relationships in some fashion and usually at least two people. After many hours of determinedly trying not to throw a tantrum like a three year old, I am now mellowing to the point of armchair philosophy, which means I am separating from it, I guess.

Of course I skipped all food until 3pm in my sulking. Sigh.

It occurred to me that a lot of what we get from other people in life is based on what we are willing to accept.

Then it occurred to me that a lot of what we get from ourselves in life is based on what we are willing to accept.


Now, before I go casting stones at everybody else, I figure I ought to look at what I do for myself. If I feel others treat me badly, could it be that I treat myself badly, and pretty much it's all one ball o' wax?

You know how they say that you have to love yourself before others love you. Well, maybe it works just the other way around, too. Maybe you have to disrespect yourself in order to get to the point where others disrespect you.

Not to be too obvious or anything, but I think it's safe to say that anybody who lets themselves get to nearly 500lbs has probably got some situation related to a lack of self respect.

I will grant myself up to about 350lbs only because I honestly did not know there was a way to deal with my weight. Early on in my weight gain I did very low-cal, daily aerobics, whole foods (mostly grains), everything perfect, and GAINED weight. This is what happens to people who react badly to carbohydrates. I knew that made me worse, that it'd be decades of agony like I've seen family members go through, and said screw it then, I'm not going to worry about it. Until I encountered the low-carb concept and read about it over a period of time, I didn't know it was possible for me. I thought I was as doomed to be gigantic as people are doomed to be without a leg if they lose one.

But between that weight and 150 lbs more, I did know that there was hope, that it was possible for me. I realize I had some psychology about it; I'd spent nearly 15 years working on 'accepting' my lot in life, mostly by being in total denial of self, mirrors, pictures, clothing, etc. It wasn't easy to make myself believe -- I was afraid to hope. I was afraid to try lest I fail, and losing that hope would seem worse than never having had it.

So now I know.

At the end of one of my favorite movies, "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray, delighted to be alive in a new day, leans over in bed to the woman he is completely in love with and says, "What can I do for you today?"

What can I do for me today?

It seems to me that if I want to respect myself, and I want to stay 'aware', that every single day when I wake up I should ask myself:

What can I do for myself today? What would be a good thing that I would do for myself if I loved myself?

And when the urge to skip a meal comes (with me it's not eating wrong stuff, it's not eating at all that is the problem), should I ask myself,

Who am I right now? Does this decision reflect respect for myself? If I really respected myself, how would I be acting toward food/eating at this moment?

Maybe in order to demand respect from other people, we first have to demand it from ourselves. Maybe I shouldn't just go along, day by day, but should proactively plan what would be good for me, a gift for me, each day, just like I might if I were in love with someone and wanting to do something that made them healthy and happy.

I tell myself that eating lowcarb is proactive. It's a start. I'm getting a lot more movement into my days, and that's a start too.

Eating regularly would help a helluva lot, I think. Drinking enough water would help. Eating more protein and less fiber would help. Taking my vitamins would help. Using my essential oils would help (seriously). In short, taking care of myself.

If I respected myself properly, wouldn't I take better care of myself? Would it have to be a grand rare occasion when I got all required food, water, vitamins, and whatever self-care all in the same day?


Because I cannot change the behavior of my mate or my kid, both of whom (for different reasons) are totally On My List today, I think I should focus on changing my own behavior. I think I should shoulder the world aside when necessary to make room for myself to have time to eat, clean space to eat in, and some personal time to take care of myself. I think if I treated myself like someone I loved, someone I wanted to take care of, this is what I would do.

And maybe, as a side effect, treating myself well will sort of "trickle down" into my reality to others around me.
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Loco Motion

Be careful what you ask for, people always say, and of course they're right.

After telling my husband I would be doing the shopping, cooking and cleaning from now on, today was a real alpha-test of just how practical this is.

I got up at 6 and did some email, showered, woke up the kid, then spent an hour cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, just in time to scarf down food and drive her to school. Came back just in time to get ready for work at 8:30. Got off work just before 6pm, just in time to go to the grocery store and shop as we're missing many core ingredient-foods. Got home just in time to take the kid to her dance class. Class finished, dropped her friend home, and went to the store to shop for the ton of stuff I discovered we don't have in the kitchen. (Why is it that he doesn't buy all the non-food stuff needed, like paper/foil/plastic wraps, storage containers, paper towels, etc.? And we were out of every basic thing (like mayo, mustard). And my housekeeper stayed extra and cleaned out the cupboards today and we threw away a bunch of rusty stuff so I needed some new pans and implements.) We were also shopping (me and the kid) allegedly to buy her a couple clothing items but that was a real disaster of stubborn bad fashion taste and arguing with mom I don't want to get into right now, as I just found emotional equilibrium and don't want to blow it haha. Then I came home and, mercifully, talked DH into helping me bring the bags in from the car. Finally got all the stuff put away. It was midnight.

I normally spend about 5-10 minutes a day on my feet. Today it was well over 4 hours. My shoes are basically a form of house shoe, no padding/support whatever. My feet think they are in hell. I could barely walk by the time I got home.

And I never got a chance to eat after 8:30am.

I fell asleep sitting up an hour or so ago and just woke up, briefly I think, realized it's tomorrow already, and I have to get up in 4.5 hours.

Of course, this is the life I led for five years of single motherhood. This was one reason why, despite 4 of 5 years of marriage being to a 'roommate/friend', despite 5 years of single motherhood, I agreed to have her dad move back in with me -- I was so exhausted, and she was starting to do poorly in school, get chubby, I thought some help with good food and her schedule and having a dad around who could do exercise-ish things with her and so on might help. He hasn't really been all that useful, so that's that. But I see that a year and a half of pawning off responsibility for the food-world on someone else has made me soft!

And this day has made me utterly exhausted. Have you any idea how much fun it is NOT to walk around on bad shoes carrying well over 400lbs? With a body that adiposity mis-aligns in spine and hips, and with thighs too big so preventing straight steps, so the process is more like a slightly hunched forward Frankenstein duck-waddle?

The average person has a hard enough time exercising; note how few gym memberships are used after 3 months. Even just moving, for life, let alone exercise, is insanely more complicated and difficult and severely un-fun when a person is overweight, and more obese they are, the moreso.

For breakfast I got the kid kiwi fruits and I'm making soyrizo & eggs, and for lunch... I dunno. I have a lot of food. I don't think I could stuff another egg into my fridge right now. I need to dedicate quite a bit of time to a massive fridge cleaning... next project!

For another day. My feet are unconscious. My head keeps lolling, I am that wiped out. My daily personal "activity level" has just jumped by several orders of magnitude. I hope, eventually, this is a positive thing for my metabolism, at least! All this motion... so suddenly... is crazy.

Back to sleep now.

Opportunity Knocks (A four-part Saga)

On September 18 at about 2am, my scale said I weighed 467 pounds.

A reading like that should be followed by some Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reassurance like DON'T PANIC!

Then again, maybe it shouldn't. I'd say that's way past time that panic should have set in.

Twice -- very briefly, once for 3 weeks as a trial, and once for three months then abandoned -- I changed to a "Low Carb" 'lifestyle'. More accurately, to an "adequate protein, adequate water and low carb" eating plan. It worked great, but I didn't stay with it. Reasons vary.

Standing on the scale, I decided it was time to do it for real. For good.

Let's go back just a bit.

***

Part 1 of the Saga

If someone came up to you and said, "Guess what! There's this way that you can eat a bunch of awesome food, lose weight, and feel so much better!" would you say, "Oh no... Another diet!"?

Some people have metabolism that requires they regulate their carbohydrates. I'm one of them.

Until a few years ago I never knew that anything existed that would deal with my weight. Most the time I've lived on one meal a day. On a purely caloric basis, I should have weighed 1/3 what I did -- if that. I'm otherwise healthy, and usually more able than plenty of folks I see who weigh half what I do. But obviously, something just ain't right.

I've watched my family members, my entire life, battle weight. I've got aunts, for example, who have quite literally been on a diet close to every day for the last 40 years. One thing or another. An addiction to Diet Shasta. And with constant, extreme dieting in one fashion or another -- a zillion variants on what the Magical Medics with the Million Dollar Unhealthcare System say one should do -- they manage to "only" be 40-150 lbs overweight. Every day they are in misery and humiliation and degraded self worth about it. Honestly, it just makes me sick to see it.

When I gained over 200 lbs in less than 2 years in my mid 20's, I realized I had not escaped the genetic charm. When low calorie and aerobics every morning and living on yogurt and salad and popcorn not only didn't make me lose weight, but made me gain it, I realized that I was just following their path. The idea of suffering that neurosis and decades of failed attempts was horrifying. I was a born performing artist who was never going to perform again thanks to my weight, that was bad enough, that abrupt end to my life's plans had already made me a bit suicidal. The idea of following their footsteps was the final straw.

I decided I was going to take it much like losing a limb or getting some disease and just focus on "living despite that" one day at a time. I would not obsess on it and let it overshadow my life. OK, so I was fat. You know, some people are homely, or overtall, or skeletal, and that is just the way we are. I decided I'd just give up on having a love life, give up on songwriting and performing, "take it like a man" -- although I'm a woman -- and find something else more constructive to do with my attention than obsess about what I apparently couldn't change.

***

Part 2 of the Saga

In mid 2000 I was 35 years old and I went into the hospital. I was healthy 'except' the 'recurring bronchitis' I'd had for over a year turned out to be untreated asthma infections. Since I'd never had any known allergies all my life, it never occurred to me that I could have asthma. Let alone "severe asthma." One night, breathing ceased to be "autonomous" -- and I knew if I went to sleep, I would not wake up.

I hate hospitals. I put off going for hours. Cleaned the house, took a shower first. Packed some things. When I saw the doc in ER, I opened my mouth to tell him that it was probably no big deal, only to hear myself blurt out, "If I say this means nothing ignore me! I'm totally type A and in denial!" I was astounded that issued from me, talk about your subconscious taking over!, and I must have looked it, as the doc and nurse looked at me, each other, and burst out laughing.

Well it turned out my poor lungs had so many coats of infection they'd literally hardened into barely-expandable little objects. They checked me into the hospital on the spot and put me on oxygen and started forcing me to use this heated industrial inhaler machine with this thick vapor that was a steroid, to start to break up all that crap in the lungs so I could cough it out. (And that was a real joy, as you might imagine.)

During my hospital stay, at one point my little girl was visiting, I was all stressed out about work, and a nurse on her third new IV attempt was pouring fluid into my tissues and flatly refusing to accept my insisting the PAIN meant it wasn't in the vein. That triple-stress and anger response to the pain, combined with having just spent 3 days inhaling a high-dose steroid every four hours!, and trying to keep it all in so I didn't shout in front of my kid, tripped my system I guess, and my heart rate apparently jumped to 298.

Nurses in blue and tennis shoes came skidding around the corner and into my room, looking astounded that I was sitting up talking. "How do you feel?" asked one of them, looking at me very oddly, and I said, "I feel fine, I just -- oh WOW, I'm so DIZZY suddenly...!"

And that is how I came to "have a cardiologist" even though -- aside from the most minor, often untraceable heart murmur I was born with -- I had no actual health issues. And a "respiratory specialist" even though until not long before I'd never had any kind of respiratory problem, and it seemed rather hard to believe that 'severe asthma' would hit someone in adulthood out of the blue.

Well, I had severe acid reflux, but everyone else I knew did too so I figured that was normal. I was incredibly depleted on energy... but so were others. I responded with allergies (where I never had before) to every potential pollen... but so did others. Little things.

So I went to see my cardiologist once I was home, on oxygen until the little alveoli could grow back in my lungs. He saw that I was reading a Jane Roberts book, and said, "Oh, you're a reader. Great." And he wrote me a prescription.

The prescription said, The Protein Power Life Plan. Author: Eades.

I got the book, but since I don't actually have any heart problems (well, not counting my weight!), and I knew it was some kind of diet book, I avoided it.

When I finally read it, I was inspired, and astounded, and yet... afraid to hope, I guess.

I set up a "three week trial" for myself in January of 2001. I would go off it, I promised myself, using that to ensure that I could at least do it that long. I wanted to see if there was anything to it at all, or if it was just one more of the zillion ways that had never worked for my aunts. (And it is---but they never did it correctly.)

I was working two jobs worth of hours -- actually more -- and a single mom -- I really didn't have time to cook, prep, plan, nothing. I did one shopping trip and bought like every meat, cheese and dairy product I found edible and figured I'd find my way.

On day 10, I realized something:

My acid reflux was gone.
My 'severe asthma' was gone.
My allergies were gone.
My complexion was totally clear for once.
I woke up in the morning awake and alert for the first time in eons.
I had energy.
I could think more clearly.
I was more limber and could move around more easily.

I didn't have a scale to fit me so I didn't know if I lost any weight.

I was utterly baffled. How could a "diet" have what amounted to medical benefits?

I had an existing appointment to keep with my "respiratory specialist." He asked how I was doing with those (expensive) three inhalers I was to be using every day. With shining eyes and enthusiasm, I told him how I'd gone on a lowcarb eating plan and how so many "minor" health issues had totally vanished -- including my "severe asthma". I breathed for him. I thought he'd be really proud of me and glad for me.

He asked if I was still using my inhalers every day. I said "Doc, maybe you didn't understand me. I don't NEED the inhalers anymore. They are not preventative, they are "treatment" for a problem, and I don't have the problem anymore! " He seemed kind of upset. I added, "I think that my asthma was actually a reaction to some food that I'm not eating anymore. Now that I'm not eating it, the so-called asthma is gone!" Now he seemed actually quietly angry. I was so confused. Then he suggested that if I would not obey his prescription requests then I should probably not be his patient anymore. I just stared at him in astonishment.

Damn it, I really liked that guy, I mean really -- he was smart and handsome and charming and witty and I was crazy about him -- up until that moment.

I went to see my cardiologist and thanked him for the book reference and told him of my experience with all these other minor health issues vanishing. He was not surprised at all, of course.

I told him of the respiratory guy's reaction. He wasn't surprised about that, either. I said, but why? Why did he never even once suggest to me that my asthma even "could potentially" be related to the food I ate? He's an expert! How could this never even once come up?!" He just smiled and (politically, I thought) said not a word.

The three week trial ended. I used this as an opportunity to gradually eat other foods for a day, then back to LC, to see what I might react to, to try and find the culprit. After another 10 days or so I was out of ketosis, but I had learned what I set out to learn:

It is apparently wheat gluten, and milk (though dairy otherwise is mostly ok). And gluten is in many things even meats (to help bind the burger) and every form of normal bread, so that meant almost anything fast food, my standard diet at the time, was a problem. I've since found that some researchers estimate 10% of the population is "sensitive" to gluten. Most of us don't know it because it's so ever-present in our lives, we are never full off it long enough to detox and realize the difference in how we feel.

During my three week trial, I searched for lowcarb recipes online. Everybody kept talking about all this junk I didn't have. From appliances to artificial sweeteners to what seemed a bizarre collection of offbeat baking materials, everybody else knew what they were doing and I was the big dork totally clueless. I couldn't make much of anything. If the ingredient wasn't available at my super walmart, then it was not do-able. I would get so frustrated about it.

Back then, there was only one lowcarb tortilla and I didn't like it; there were no wraps, there was no lowcarb bread. It sucked. I was living mostly on nuking cheese and pepperoni, on string cheese, scrambled eggs, and jalapeno jack grilled burgers. I branched out to crockpot chicken, and salads with chicken. Still. I knew I'd need a wider range of food if it was going to work for me.

I determined that "in the future, someday hopefully soon, I will go back on low-carb eating." I didn't have time to plan/cook/etc.; I didn't even have time to sleep, my work was crazy. I also determined that "until then, whenever I have some extra money, I am going to buy stuff that would make staying on this plan workable."

So over time, I bought appliances, I bought specialty items, I worked on gradually creating an 'inventory' that would be everything I needed. For "someday."

***

Part 3 of the Saga

Around Spring of 2005 I decided to do lowcarb again. I went for it. And it worked GREAT. I lost 70 pounds in 3 months. I felt fabulous!

In June, my estranged-for-5-years husband moved in. And he didn't want to eat lowcarb. And since I was working and he wasn't, he agreed to "handle the food" for the household, and since I did nothing but work and sleep then thanks to work, it seemed a lifesaver. Except once he found one small thing he could make, like say a lowcarb piece of toast with a spread, he seemed to think I should eat that for every meal from then on as it wasn't much trouble, which of course sent me foraging for other stuff, which had to be quick.

I started getting and eating the quick frankenfood "lowcarb bars," which seemed to really increase my cravings. We went out to eat a lot and I tried to order right and pick around stuff, but eating out should be an 'occasional' thing -- when you do it a whole lot, the 'extra carbs' creep up. The cravings hit me so hard, it was just horrible!

One night I fell, taking several Outback Steakhouse pumpernickel bread loaves, blooming onion pieces, and a Sidney's Sinful Sunday with me.

I didn't get back on the wagon.

***

Part 4 of the Saga

As 2006 wore on, I got more and more sedentary. It got harder to do stuff you need to be able to do, like... stand up! My back would hurt within 30 seconds just from standing. Let's not even start on walking (with a spine misaligned by adiposity, and thighs that were in each other's way).

I was trying to find time for a little meditation in my busy schedule, so I started having my husband (aka "DH") go in and shop while I would sit in the car. Eventually, I had ceased to do much of anything. And it got harder to do anything. And in September, I turned 41.

A few days after my birthday I dug out the scale (the one I had to shell out a ton of money for, to find one that went high enough...). And I weighed myself, and saw that while I had gone from 482 to 411 over a year prior, I had gained back up to 467.

It was about 2am, but I decided, that's it. I can hardly move, can't hardly stand, can't hardly walk, am SO exhausted all the time, my body's getting older, and I think I am going to DIE if I don't do something. I am going back on the plan.

Third time's a charm, so they say.

***

This blog is for me: to make notes about my progress, my feelings, etc. Sometimes I might copy something from another blog of mine in here if it applies.

I am positive, you see. I believe that eventually I will have lost so much weight, peoples' mouths will hang in awe.

And when I reach that point, I'd like to be able to point to a documented history of it. So maybe other people in the situation I'm in now, hoping that there is hope for them, can find it and know there is.

***

It's not a hobby, not an occasional tool. It's a lifetime eating plan.

It's not a diet. It's an opportunity. So... opportunity knocks. Now's my chance. And that rocks! I choose to live.


Welcome to my probably-astoundingly-dull blog about low carb.