Well, there you go. Whine, kvetch, gripe, blog, and then throw yourself on your bed and cry your head off until you fall asleep. It worked for me. But finally that glorious time of the month arrived, and I quit feeling like alt.FatGirl.die.die.die and got on with my life.
Today I was reading the blog Weight of the Evidence, and she was talking about trying to successfully live, let alone lowcarb, on a pitifully small amount of money.
It got me thinking about gardens. You know, the last century's radical shift away from gardening is not just about free time. If anything people have more free time than they ever did, culturally -- they just have other priorities, of course. I suspect it's more about a trend of basically avoiding responsibility, in a way. I don't mean if you don't have a garden you're irresponsible (haha!), I mean that as a culture at large it seems like we grow more and more toward "paying someone to feed us or fix us."
Like to example the latter, my friend didn't want to do lowcarb because her doctor said it was unhealthy, so now she's on a drug to relieve acid reflux. Or another woman I met who said she had a gastric bypass not just for the weight issue but "to deal with major medical problems" like acid reflux. Holy cats on a pogo stick batman! Apparently the second one didn't know that 10 days on lowcarb (off gluten in particular) solved my major acid reflux problem instantly, bam, GONE -- and the first just didn't care. Don't bother me with facts. Don't expect me to eat well. Here's money. Give me a pill and shut up about it.
Well as much as so many folks wax on about "fresh fruits and vegetables," I'm led to think that they don't know much about the vegetables sitting in their walmart produce section. The carbs are often much higher, the nutrients vastly lower, in what you buy at the store, because those are genetic strains designed for single-point harvesting (not gradually like most plants), and to withstand shipment in a box over long distances without visible bruising or spoilage, and to taste as sweet as possible. In short, they are designed to be big sweet cardboard. Kind of like the breakfast cereal version of vegetables. Not to say they're bad!--they're not. Just to say that most the stuff in the grocery just doesn't compare to what you can grow at home.
(By the way. You can even grow mushrooms at home. We buy mushroom compost, from a local firm that sells the typical little white ones you get in the store. It's usually pretty hot (not really ready to be used IN the garden, needs some more biodegrading) but we dumped some in a bed we weren't using. Months later, we pulled out several groups of mushrooms, that were literally like 9" circumference. I'd never seen anything so gigantic. Apparently these little guys don't have a growth limit on them, they are simply harvested at that size consistently. You can get mushroom kits from most seed selling sources.)
My point is that it's close to free -- not quite but nearly so, moreso over time -- to grow your own vegetables, that are as fresh and nutritious as they can be.
If you have, anywhere on your property, a square of even occasional sunlight, even in short-day climates, of at least 2 foot by 2 foot in size (well you could do 12"x12" but that is really cutting it close! ;-)), you can grow a small garden.
I'm serious. Anybody who has not read the terrific book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew, please do yourself a favor and read it. It is SO worth the read. It's simple, interesting, kinda humorous in spots, and lays out a garden plan that is actually fun, even for kids. You can sometimes find it in libraries or used. It shows you how you can grow the maximum yield (food) in the minimum amount of space, soil, water, and effort.
If you want to see my standing garden -- last year when it was in use! -- visit The 8-Cat Garden and browse through the maybe dozen posts there. Not much on that blog. I am not gardening this year because between getting my ex to move out, focusing on my diet, on my job, spending more time with my kid (and taking months off to eat high carb which made me feel exhausted and not inclined to plant when I should have!) I won't be gardening this year.
I might give in this weekend and throw a few seedlings for herbs and peppers and tomatoes in the ground but whether I feel like watering them during the summer heat for their survival is still up in the air I'm afraid. The new grape arbor however I'll find a way to get water too. The horrid re-re-re-freeze we had after it had already warmed up and bloomed into Spring this year, killed nearly all the vines dead it appeared, but some life is coming back near the ground on most of them and I want to help them survive.
But enough about me -- though I AM the center of the universe, if my ego is any indicator -- I was supposed to be talking about gardening.
Since the dawn of whatever time God, Aliens or Happy Chance taught man that sticking seeds or fruits in the ground would make something grow, mankind has been growing food. If you went back a century, in any country you may live in, you'd probably find a great majority of the population (outside the inner cities of course) who flat out could not have lived were it not for the serious gardening they did (and often other things, like raising chickens and goats, making butter, etc.).
Let me repeat that. People grew food because they could not afford to shop much, especially if they had lots of kids. So why does that never seem to occur to people today??
I used to do programming for my living and I don't know if it's related, but I was kinda worried about Y2K. No, I was not buying a gun and a fallout shelter in Montana. I was buying stored bulk food and medical supplies in case the apt. complex across the street, full of old women and single moms and kids, faced some bureaucratic no welfare checks today kind of problem.
I was pretty casual about it until the official meeting with the president and leaders of all major media sources resulted in a total blackout on the subject except for the occasional mocking of someone worried. Had they said, "Well it could be an issue, but we don't expect it. It's a good idea if y'all keep some water and food and TP around in case the just in time inventory system, computer driven as it and bulk product transportation and fuel often is, has any difficulties," then I would have done exactly that and not worried about it. But the mysterious silence instead -- I guess applying that "don't ask, don't tell" motto to leadership, as well as other controversial subjects -- completely freaked me out. I had a 2 year old at the time I first started thinking about it. As any mother knows, this is related, of course. The biological instinct to protect the child is overwhelming.
So I set out to educating myself. I read so much stuff via internet and via book that it was like cramming for a hard college final, but every single day for like 18 months. I know more about making a homemade brick wall from scratch, delivering babies, baking without an oven, and composting human waste, then you could ever want to know, as just a few examples.
Totally by accident, I came to realize that not only was I a city girl, but I was utterly ignorant, totally dependent, and would basically die left to my own devices. I really had no idea how ignorant I was until I really started studying everything. And one of the most astonishing, horrifying, yet interesting subjects I ended up reading a ton about was natural gardening.
Some people think that even as you read this, somewhere, some machiavellian evil overlord is conspiring to squash research for lowcarb and push carbs not just for product sales but to make the medical industry yet more money and humans yet more dependent on pharmaceutical.
Well, I don't know about that. Probably. Maybe?
But I do know that even as you read this, those sorts are conspiring and implementing every plan they can to make it so food seeds are unavailable to the public, so food is patented and licensed and seeds aren't even allowed to be kept or sold or traded, or if they are, they are designed to not work at all for a second season's growth.
I know, it sounds extreme. It is like an onion, if you study this subject, you just keep thinking it can't get any worse, and the more you learn, the more you're just completely lost for words on what a 'Grand Plan' it seems to be at some level and how well it is working thanks to the ignorance and unconcern of our population. When I started reading about seed saving and the whole situation of seeds in our world, I was stunned. Were it not for the amazing efforts of a small number of die-hard, ridiculously driven, overworked altruists over the last couple decades in particular, to found tons of seed saving organizations and share seeds and develop farms just to perpetuate and keep rare seed strains alive, and to gather seeds from all over the world -- the situation would be 100x worse today than it would have been without them.
I know most people think you just go to the store and buy a packet of seeds. Easy, right?
A few are the sort that will reproduce next year if you know how to save them properly, if you prevent cross contamination of the crop, if you store the seed well, if you have decent soil (which is generally built, not bought). Most of them aren't. Most of them will grow nifty oversized and over-sweetened (carby!) vegetables and fruits for you and if you want to grow anything next year, you'll need to go buy more seeds, or what you'll get may or may not look or taste anything like what you plan.
Now look again at how many options you have in that store. Do you realize that there are hundreds of types of peas alone? Who knew?? How many of those do you see available to you in the store? Probably one. Maybe two. How many different companies do you see on those seed packages -- and do you know if they actually share a parent company?
Most people have never given a second thought to the subject of gardening and seeds and the availability of seeds -- and seeds that will bear fruit you can collect seeds from to grow another season -- I certainly hadn't. Might be worth your time. Especially if you don't have much money.
It's a basic survival skill. It's the sort of thing we all should know a little about, just because we are human, just because we eat to survive.
And it's more fun and not as much work if you do it right. Even I at 482 lbs could garden -- you just plan it to fit what you can do. Even a small planter, near enough your door/traffic that you see it regularly so watering and care is easy and totally minor, can grow more 'stuff' than you might imagine! Yummy stuff. Green onions and a diced small roma tomato and a pinch of an herb can make a major difference in a morning's scrambled eggs.
And add a lot to your health. And save a lot for your pocketbook!
Showing posts with label self-sufficiency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-sufficiency. Show all posts
Friday, May 25
Saturday, May 12
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.
.
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.
.
Friday, February 9
Independence Day
Today is my official independence day: my husband, as of late last night, is out of the country, and permanently out of my life aside from visits-to-kid. Thanks be to God. I feel like I have lost a ton of weight from some unspecified part of my body, as if we hold some 'astral' sense of weight with things that 'weigh us down'.
I could look at this as losing 195 lbs overnight. I feel great!
It'll take me at least a month just to clean up the unbelievable amount of STUFF he over-occupied the main room (and largest bedroom) with, but I'll do it. And after two months of ice and snow, and 8 cats stuck in the house all the time, I decided to get tough about them at the same time. He went to the airport and they got thrown out to live in the garage. It has a couple HAC vents out there, food, water, litterboxes, and a cat-door in the window so they are free to go in/outdoors. I let the little fragile one with no body fat stay inside, but when it warms up, she can go out too.
Already the house FEELS significantly different.
I'm so happy.
I sang, "Hit the ROAD, Jack! And don'tcha come back! No more, no more, no more, no more!" all the way home from the airport.
I think I'll go clean something.
I could look at this as losing 195 lbs overnight. I feel great!
It'll take me at least a month just to clean up the unbelievable amount of STUFF he over-occupied the main room (and largest bedroom) with, but I'll do it. And after two months of ice and snow, and 8 cats stuck in the house all the time, I decided to get tough about them at the same time. He went to the airport and they got thrown out to live in the garage. It has a couple HAC vents out there, food, water, litterboxes, and a cat-door in the window so they are free to go in/outdoors. I let the little fragile one with no body fat stay inside, but when it warms up, she can go out too.
Already the house FEELS significantly different.
I'm so happy.
I sang, "Hit the ROAD, Jack! And don'tcha come back! No more, no more, no more, no more!" all the way home from the airport.
I think I'll go clean something.
Friday, January 5
LowCarb: Examples of My Improvement
I thought I would do a summary of what has changed with me since I went on lowcarb at 2am September 18, 2006. Just to remind myself.
Sometimes, "better health" is almost like when pain goes away -- after a short time you forget it ever existed; you forget to be properly appreciative for the better state you're now in!
o0o
I want to mention as a preliminary thanks: My cardiologist "wrote me a prescription" for The Protein Power Lifeplan book by the Drs. Eades. Had it not been for him, I am not sure I would ever have found -- or believed in -- this eating plan. He never pushed it on me. He never even told me to go on a diet. He simply said, "This will help you, if you're interested." I was. And it sure has!
And of course, had the book not been information-packed, yet highly readable, even interesting, and something that genuinely gave me hope, I might not have gone farther. I also read two of Dr. Atkins's books. These people are changing the world, one body at a time.
o0o
First I lost a bucketload of retained water in my tissues. No longer swollen up and bloated everywhere. Much more limber. More energy. No more feeling a painful bruise if a kid or cat barely leaned on me.
My sleep improved. I could actually sleep mostly through the night, to begin with, which was novel. I could wake up fully, without feeling like at some point in my sleep I'd been run over by a freight train. I lost some degree of the total exhaustion that the combination of weight, bloating, and sleep deprivation had combined to.
My mental clarity improved. I could think more clearly, and my memory was better (though better sleep might be part of this too!). My general mood and frame of mind was improved. That makes sense... since the more exhausted you are, the more everything aches and hurts, the less cheerful one is likely to be.
My acid reflux vanished. No more choking on burning vomit. Cheers to that, mate! I tried to tell a friend of mine how well it had worked for me and encouraged her to try it. Of course, she wouldn't. The doctor says high-fat and low-carb is bad for you, she says; now she is on a chronic medication to prevent or minimize her acid reflux. Hmmmn. Steak vs. drugs. Hard to believe anybody would find the latter healthier!
My asthma went away. If I am really emotional plus over-exercising at the same time, I will still manifest a little of it, but the chronic wheezing and oxygen deprivation that filled every minute of my life vanished. No need for inhalers now. I keep an albuterol in my purse in case I should ever have some major episode but I never use anything now... I don't need it. Apparently it is at least partly related to gluten, to which I am sensitive, but didn't know until I went lowcarb. When I eat two lowcarb tortillas or other gluten product, I get the tiniest bit of asthma about 24-36 hours later, but I don't do that often and otherwise, I have none, since my average diet removed all the gluten-containing foods I used to eat constantly.
My complexion is a little clearer now, most of the time at least. Increased water intake might be partly responsible for this, but increased fat intake -- fat is used for skin and soft tissue cells -- is probably the main reason.
I lost 100 pounds so far. Do you have ANY idea how much easier and less exhausting it is when you lose 20%+ of your massive bodyweight fairly quickly? It's amazing.
My feet are smaller. I fit into a pair of tennis shoes and for the first time in years I am wearing shoes with some kind of decent support. I used to "hobble". Every step was terribly painful. All that weight on my poor feet, with no real support. Now I walk comfortably with nary a thought to my feet.
My thighs are smaller. When I started, I could hardly stand on my scale, even with its slightly oversized footprint, because it required squeezing my legs together so hard to get both feet next to each other on the scale! Now it's not really a big deal to put both feet on the scale and stand there.
My butt is smaller. When I started, I couldn't get into the largest size pants I could buy -- 6x -- now they fit me very comfortably. I don't wear them plain -- I always wear skirts -- but I wear soft pants under the skirts now. This is the first winter I have not been wearing a skirt with nothing under it and open shoes when it was 20 degrees below freezing. It's surprisingly more comfortable now.
I can walk better. Excessive fat puts the spine out of alignment and displaces the hips' ability to have the normal range of motion for walking. Last September when I began this eating plan, I could not even stand up for 30 seconds without my back hurting. After two minutes I was in agony. Even walking across the house wasn't easy. I could not walk around Walmart to shop. I didn't ride the electric cart, I simply avoided shopping entirely, pawning it off on other people to help me. Now I can walk around super Walmart for an hour and I am at the most kind of weary; no back pain at all. I can take my kid to the movies without it being a major event to get in and out. I can even consider stopping by a store AFTER that. Amazing.
I can sure move more, aerobically. If I did have to walk somewhere, such as from the car to a building, I had to walk more slowly than someone very old with a walker, or my breathing would get erratic, asthma would kick in (exercise induced asthma: the body can't get oxygen to that much body fast enough), my heart would pound dangerously -- in short, I could barely move without imminent risk of a heart attack. Now I can not only walk around, but I can walk at a normal human pace, sometimes even briskly for very short distances, without breathing overly hard. This is not just because I lost weight, it is because my protein uptake and oxygen increase has enabled my muscles to better utilize the oxygen my heart pumps to them. Even without losing weight, improving those two issues for severely obese people can help a lot.
I can do things that require muscle much better now. I can walk up stairs without having to put both feet on each stair like a little child. I can do so without using my arm(s) on the handrail for extensive muscle support. I can get out of my car (which is low, so requires lifting UP out of it) without having to desperately push against the door and seat -- in fact, I can simply slide out from under that steering wheel much more easily, and lift myself that small way on one leg comfortably. I can step on and off curbs far more easily. I can actually lift a leg UP enough to step over things -- or to step into pants.
The whole top half of my body is smaller. I had several new 5x tanks with built-in shelf bras that I had bought and barely worn. They were comfortable but a little loose -- the straps a bit too long -- to begin with. Now they literally fall off me in every dimension. I might as well give them away. Meanwhile I had a few 4x very thick, tight sports shirt-bra things I'd bought that I could barely get into (let alone out of) that now fit very comfortably. These are ideal for exercise. Now if I would just do some. :-)
I can experiment in the kitchen now. When I began, even 5 minutes to try and put food together for myself was a horrible thing with my back hurting, my feet aching, and exhaustion taking over me. I couldn't even make an actual dinner. Now I go in the kitchen for 30-60 minutes and do experiments with all kinds of new lowcarb foods. I brought my CD/MP3 player into the kitchen and my little girl and I dance around in there as I prepare things.
Tonight, I made a yummy "Egg Cake Choconuke" which is my term for a rich cocoa-fudge "mock danish" as some call it. It was divine. The kid helped measure and stir and we split it. Single small serving for each and we were happy. (Recipe: 2 large eggs, 2oz cream cheese, 2 tsp dutched high butterfat cocoa powder, 1.25 tsp Fiberfit™ sweetener powder (equiv to 10 tsp sweetener), mixed well in rounded cheap glad plastic bowl, and nuked it in that for a couple minutes (+/- depending on microwave). Eat with a spoon. Like a cross between cake and bread pudding, depending on your liquid content. Each serving: 2.56ECC, 5.97Protein.) Gee whiz. Low carb is so HARD, hahaha!
But seriously: most of my food is yummy meat-based dishes I make in the crockpot. A lot of the rest is some form of eggs. And I love cheese, so I often have that in or on food, or even as a major food (such as a bunch in a lowcarb tortilla, with some herbs and spices, grilled as a quesadilla). I like peppers so they are my main vegetable, though I sometimes have salad, onions or broccoli as well. I try to eat several times a day in small doses and drink a lot of water. The important part is that I am never hungry, I eat stuff that tastes great, and I'm losing weight anyway.
The changes in me over the last nearly-4 months are not just in body and mind though. Some are also in what you might call heart and soul.
I have been set free. Another way of putting this would be: I am getting divorced. Now people might think this is a bad thing, or unfortunate. Quite the contrary. My husband and I are on very good terms.
The end of my dsyfunctionally continuing to support a man who won't work for a living, won't spend time with his kid, totally over-dominates my living space, has to be driven everywhere like a child, makes a disaster of my house and landscape, and has zero relationship with me, all this for eleven years (!), is at an end. Thanks to lowcarb, I was able to escape the brain-fog, and the exhaustion-based terror of being unable to fend for myself let alone my child, that has kept me in "needy dependency" on him.
I have more "SENSE OF SELF." I am not angry and we are not 'fighting' (you can't fight with a passive/aggressive anyway), I have just recognized that I am a decent person, and I deserve a man who loves me, and my child will be better off with a happy, functional, clean and workable home and visiting her father, rather than living in squalor and misery with him local. I deserve a man who does something constructive with his life and mine, instead of living on eBay and video games all day. I deserve a real "relationship." I put all those years into it, and he can go make his own living now. I am taking charge of making a nice house and environment and life for me and my little girl.
I have taken up music again. Songwriting, guitar and vocals were literally my life from the time I was a small child until my early-mid 20's when I suddenly gained a ton of weight and abruptly had to give up music, as I was too mortified to be in front of anybody. I have lost that greatly needed creative and emotional outlet, probably at a high cost to my psyche. I have let that back in again and am playing, singing, writing, for the first time in 17 years. It's like some "alive" part of me that had been closed down and boarded up and buried, is running through me again, making me remember more of "myself" and what I feel and what has meaning to me.
I have gone back to a lot more prayer and appreciation of life again. When I was so much more exhausted, mentally-muddy, easily hurt or injured, for some reason it was more difficult to concentrate on anything, including any sense of spirit, and I often felt sad or angry or depressed instead of positive. I feel more clear now, not just mentally, but even in terms of my relationship with what I consider the Divine.
It has been 108 days since I went lowcarb. All of these things have happened within this timeframe. That is less than 4 months.
If you are severely obese, can you imagine turning your life around like that? Can you imagine finding someone to love -- and it turns out to be yourself? Can you imagine so radically improving your life that you feel like a whole new person? It can happen.
It takes some planning, some shopping, some crockpot cooking is easiest, and the determination to NOT eat carb-laden foods -- instead, once you finish the "detox" of the initial eating plan (so you drop a lot of the carb cravings), just learn to make food you love! -- it can be done.
I am living proof that a person can go from nearly 500 lbs, barely being able to walk or even stand, hardly functioning at all in the world others know, unable to do their own shopping, cooking, or cleaning -- to a much more vivacious, physically and mentally competent, creative person who finally feels hope for a future again.
The timeframe for everyone is different. Men tend to lose faster than women. Some women can lose 100lbs in 9 weeks and some it takes a year. It depends on how much weight you start with, what you eat, how much water you drink, what exercise you do, what supplements you take, and how focused you are on your goals mentally. But I have not done much that is special besides WANT IT and eat lowcarb. And in less than four months I have accomplished this.
I might be dead already if I hadn't. That is what made me go on lowcarb at 2:00 AM one morning a few days after my birthday, when I realized I could barely walk, stand, or function as a human being anymore. When I realized the chance of me being around for my little girl in two years, let alone when she is someday having her own child, were growing more slim by the minute.
I am still too shy for posting pictures, but I do have before and after photos. In perhaps another 50 lbs I hope to have the courage to post them.
A special thanks always to Dr. Richard Atkins, and Drs. Mary Dan and Michael Eades, whose books and good works helped inspire, encourage and educate me.
Thanks to lowcarb eating, for the first time in 17 years, I am finally truly ALIVE.
PJ
.
Sometimes, "better health" is almost like when pain goes away -- after a short time you forget it ever existed; you forget to be properly appreciative for the better state you're now in!
o0o
I want to mention as a preliminary thanks: My cardiologist "wrote me a prescription" for The Protein Power Lifeplan book by the Drs. Eades. Had it not been for him, I am not sure I would ever have found -- or believed in -- this eating plan. He never pushed it on me. He never even told me to go on a diet. He simply said, "This will help you, if you're interested." I was. And it sure has!
And of course, had the book not been information-packed, yet highly readable, even interesting, and something that genuinely gave me hope, I might not have gone farther. I also read two of Dr. Atkins's books. These people are changing the world, one body at a time.
o0o
First I lost a bucketload of retained water in my tissues. No longer swollen up and bloated everywhere. Much more limber. More energy. No more feeling a painful bruise if a kid or cat barely leaned on me.
My sleep improved. I could actually sleep mostly through the night, to begin with, which was novel. I could wake up fully, without feeling like at some point in my sleep I'd been run over by a freight train. I lost some degree of the total exhaustion that the combination of weight, bloating, and sleep deprivation had combined to.
My mental clarity improved. I could think more clearly, and my memory was better (though better sleep might be part of this too!). My general mood and frame of mind was improved. That makes sense... since the more exhausted you are, the more everything aches and hurts, the less cheerful one is likely to be.
My acid reflux vanished. No more choking on burning vomit. Cheers to that, mate! I tried to tell a friend of mine how well it had worked for me and encouraged her to try it. Of course, she wouldn't. The doctor says high-fat and low-carb is bad for you, she says; now she is on a chronic medication to prevent or minimize her acid reflux. Hmmmn. Steak vs. drugs. Hard to believe anybody would find the latter healthier!
My asthma went away. If I am really emotional plus over-exercising at the same time, I will still manifest a little of it, but the chronic wheezing and oxygen deprivation that filled every minute of my life vanished. No need for inhalers now. I keep an albuterol in my purse in case I should ever have some major episode but I never use anything now... I don't need it. Apparently it is at least partly related to gluten, to which I am sensitive, but didn't know until I went lowcarb. When I eat two lowcarb tortillas or other gluten product, I get the tiniest bit of asthma about 24-36 hours later, but I don't do that often and otherwise, I have none, since my average diet removed all the gluten-containing foods I used to eat constantly.
My complexion is a little clearer now, most of the time at least. Increased water intake might be partly responsible for this, but increased fat intake -- fat is used for skin and soft tissue cells -- is probably the main reason.
I lost 100 pounds so far. Do you have ANY idea how much easier and less exhausting it is when you lose 20%+ of your massive bodyweight fairly quickly? It's amazing.
My feet are smaller. I fit into a pair of tennis shoes and for the first time in years I am wearing shoes with some kind of decent support. I used to "hobble". Every step was terribly painful. All that weight on my poor feet, with no real support. Now I walk comfortably with nary a thought to my feet.
My thighs are smaller. When I started, I could hardly stand on my scale, even with its slightly oversized footprint, because it required squeezing my legs together so hard to get both feet next to each other on the scale! Now it's not really a big deal to put both feet on the scale and stand there.
My butt is smaller. When I started, I couldn't get into the largest size pants I could buy -- 6x -- now they fit me very comfortably. I don't wear them plain -- I always wear skirts -- but I wear soft pants under the skirts now. This is the first winter I have not been wearing a skirt with nothing under it and open shoes when it was 20 degrees below freezing. It's surprisingly more comfortable now.
I can walk better. Excessive fat puts the spine out of alignment and displaces the hips' ability to have the normal range of motion for walking. Last September when I began this eating plan, I could not even stand up for 30 seconds without my back hurting. After two minutes I was in agony. Even walking across the house wasn't easy. I could not walk around Walmart to shop. I didn't ride the electric cart, I simply avoided shopping entirely, pawning it off on other people to help me. Now I can walk around super Walmart for an hour and I am at the most kind of weary; no back pain at all. I can take my kid to the movies without it being a major event to get in and out. I can even consider stopping by a store AFTER that. Amazing.
I can sure move more, aerobically. If I did have to walk somewhere, such as from the car to a building, I had to walk more slowly than someone very old with a walker, or my breathing would get erratic, asthma would kick in (exercise induced asthma: the body can't get oxygen to that much body fast enough), my heart would pound dangerously -- in short, I could barely move without imminent risk of a heart attack. Now I can not only walk around, but I can walk at a normal human pace, sometimes even briskly for very short distances, without breathing overly hard. This is not just because I lost weight, it is because my protein uptake and oxygen increase has enabled my muscles to better utilize the oxygen my heart pumps to them. Even without losing weight, improving those two issues for severely obese people can help a lot.
I can do things that require muscle much better now. I can walk up stairs without having to put both feet on each stair like a little child. I can do so without using my arm(s) on the handrail for extensive muscle support. I can get out of my car (which is low, so requires lifting UP out of it) without having to desperately push against the door and seat -- in fact, I can simply slide out from under that steering wheel much more easily, and lift myself that small way on one leg comfortably. I can step on and off curbs far more easily. I can actually lift a leg UP enough to step over things -- or to step into pants.
The whole top half of my body is smaller. I had several new 5x tanks with built-in shelf bras that I had bought and barely worn. They were comfortable but a little loose -- the straps a bit too long -- to begin with. Now they literally fall off me in every dimension. I might as well give them away. Meanwhile I had a few 4x very thick, tight sports shirt-bra things I'd bought that I could barely get into (let alone out of) that now fit very comfortably. These are ideal for exercise. Now if I would just do some. :-)
I can experiment in the kitchen now. When I began, even 5 minutes to try and put food together for myself was a horrible thing with my back hurting, my feet aching, and exhaustion taking over me. I couldn't even make an actual dinner. Now I go in the kitchen for 30-60 minutes and do experiments with all kinds of new lowcarb foods. I brought my CD/MP3 player into the kitchen and my little girl and I dance around in there as I prepare things.
Tonight, I made a yummy "Egg Cake Choconuke" which is my term for a rich cocoa-fudge "mock danish" as some call it. It was divine. The kid helped measure and stir and we split it. Single small serving for each and we were happy. (Recipe: 2 large eggs, 2oz cream cheese, 2 tsp dutched high butterfat cocoa powder, 1.25 tsp Fiberfit™ sweetener powder (equiv to 10 tsp sweetener), mixed well in rounded cheap glad plastic bowl, and nuked it in that for a couple minutes (+/- depending on microwave). Eat with a spoon. Like a cross between cake and bread pudding, depending on your liquid content. Each serving: 2.56ECC, 5.97Protein.) Gee whiz. Low carb is so HARD, hahaha!
But seriously: most of my food is yummy meat-based dishes I make in the crockpot. A lot of the rest is some form of eggs. And I love cheese, so I often have that in or on food, or even as a major food (such as a bunch in a lowcarb tortilla, with some herbs and spices, grilled as a quesadilla). I like peppers so they are my main vegetable, though I sometimes have salad, onions or broccoli as well. I try to eat several times a day in small doses and drink a lot of water. The important part is that I am never hungry, I eat stuff that tastes great, and I'm losing weight anyway.
The changes in me over the last nearly-4 months are not just in body and mind though. Some are also in what you might call heart and soul.
I have been set free. Another way of putting this would be: I am getting divorced. Now people might think this is a bad thing, or unfortunate. Quite the contrary. My husband and I are on very good terms.
The end of my dsyfunctionally continuing to support a man who won't work for a living, won't spend time with his kid, totally over-dominates my living space, has to be driven everywhere like a child, makes a disaster of my house and landscape, and has zero relationship with me, all this for eleven years (!), is at an end. Thanks to lowcarb, I was able to escape the brain-fog, and the exhaustion-based terror of being unable to fend for myself let alone my child, that has kept me in "needy dependency" on him.
I have more "SENSE OF SELF." I am not angry and we are not 'fighting' (you can't fight with a passive/aggressive anyway), I have just recognized that I am a decent person, and I deserve a man who loves me, and my child will be better off with a happy, functional, clean and workable home and visiting her father, rather than living in squalor and misery with him local. I deserve a man who does something constructive with his life and mine, instead of living on eBay and video games all day. I deserve a real "relationship." I put all those years into it, and he can go make his own living now. I am taking charge of making a nice house and environment and life for me and my little girl.
I have taken up music again. Songwriting, guitar and vocals were literally my life from the time I was a small child until my early-mid 20's when I suddenly gained a ton of weight and abruptly had to give up music, as I was too mortified to be in front of anybody. I have lost that greatly needed creative and emotional outlet, probably at a high cost to my psyche. I have let that back in again and am playing, singing, writing, for the first time in 17 years. It's like some "alive" part of me that had been closed down and boarded up and buried, is running through me again, making me remember more of "myself" and what I feel and what has meaning to me.
I have gone back to a lot more prayer and appreciation of life again. When I was so much more exhausted, mentally-muddy, easily hurt or injured, for some reason it was more difficult to concentrate on anything, including any sense of spirit, and I often felt sad or angry or depressed instead of positive. I feel more clear now, not just mentally, but even in terms of my relationship with what I consider the Divine.
It has been 108 days since I went lowcarb. All of these things have happened within this timeframe. That is less than 4 months.
If you are severely obese, can you imagine turning your life around like that? Can you imagine finding someone to love -- and it turns out to be yourself? Can you imagine so radically improving your life that you feel like a whole new person? It can happen.
It takes some planning, some shopping, some crockpot cooking is easiest, and the determination to NOT eat carb-laden foods -- instead, once you finish the "detox" of the initial eating plan (so you drop a lot of the carb cravings), just learn to make food you love! -- it can be done.
I am living proof that a person can go from nearly 500 lbs, barely being able to walk or even stand, hardly functioning at all in the world others know, unable to do their own shopping, cooking, or cleaning -- to a much more vivacious, physically and mentally competent, creative person who finally feels hope for a future again.
The timeframe for everyone is different. Men tend to lose faster than women. Some women can lose 100lbs in 9 weeks and some it takes a year. It depends on how much weight you start with, what you eat, how much water you drink, what exercise you do, what supplements you take, and how focused you are on your goals mentally. But I have not done much that is special besides WANT IT and eat lowcarb. And in less than four months I have accomplished this.
I might be dead already if I hadn't. That is what made me go on lowcarb at 2:00 AM one morning a few days after my birthday, when I realized I could barely walk, stand, or function as a human being anymore. When I realized the chance of me being around for my little girl in two years, let alone when she is someday having her own child, were growing more slim by the minute.
I am still too shy for posting pictures, but I do have before and after photos. In perhaps another 50 lbs I hope to have the courage to post them.
A special thanks always to Dr. Richard Atkins, and Drs. Mary Dan and Michael Eades, whose books and good works helped inspire, encourage and educate me.
Thanks to lowcarb eating, for the first time in 17 years, I am finally truly ALIVE.
PJ
.
Monday, January 1
It's the New Year!!
Year 2007 Resolutions
SECTION A: Me Me Me
A1. I resolve to stop for at least 15 seconds within the first 30 minutes of waking up each day, to concentrate on FEELING GRATEFUL FOR MY LIFE, and FEELING LOVED, and FEELING HOPE ABOUT MY FUTURE. And to say, "Please help me" to the Divine. 15 seconds. How hard is this?
A2. I resolve for one year, this year, to care more about myself than others. My first duty is to myself. When I am happy and cared for, I can be of better help to all -- and a better, stronger example for my daughter. My motto is WWXD: What Would Xena Do?
A3. I resolve to bring regular exercise, at least 3 times per week to begin, into my life. This may have to begin with little more than counting how many seconds I can hold a half sit-up and things like that: that is fine. But it has to be something.
A4. I resolve to make a genuine effort to get at least 6 hours of sleep per night. If this means I don't get as much done and see my best friend less, then that is what it means. My health, my weight loss, my attitude, my mental clarity, are paramount.
A5. I resolve, when affordable, to get my nails done regularly. Though the left hand must be super-short, keeping the right hand short to moderate length but strong will be great for guitar, and keeping them up and painted will be a small concession to luxury and taking care of myself.
A6. I resolve to do at least one archetype meditation per week that is specific to either weight/size-loss, health, or something else important in my life. It doesn't have to take a long time. The impact of these on my reality is profound. There is no excuse for not taking 15 minutes for this.
That is all for the ME category.
I COME FIRST.
SECTION B: Kid Kid Kid
B1. I resolve as of February on to bring my entire house into lowcarb eating. I will supply fruits for snack, LC bread and LC tortillas, but otherwise the child will have to learn to eat lowcarb. There is no excuse as a mother for feeding her crap because it is faster/easier/she begs. She's nearly fat. My responsibility as a mother is to her health, more than to my convenience.
B2. I resolve to get the kid to bed at a decent hour nightly and without bedtime carbs. She is chronically sleep deprived, often unsupervised during the night, and has learned disrespect for my efforts on this front. Aside from which it probably greatly affects her HGH output and metabolism. I will do what is needed because that is my duty as a loving mother.
B3. I resolve to make the kid do stuff with me. Allowing her to play video games or whatever instead of helping me cook, allowing her to do no chores but be messy, is just bad for her, and it diminishes time spent together and her sense of contribution to our mutual life.
That is all for the KID category.
BETTER PARENTING NOW.
SECTION C: Food Food Food
C1. I resolve to use a kitchen timer so that every 90 minutes from waking to sleeping, I am reminded to drink as much water as I can hold. At the most this should involve approximately 6 minutes per day. Six minutes to greatly improve my weight loss, my skin hydration, my health. I can do this. This means filtering water and filling water bottles at night or morning. YES, I can do this.
C2. I resolve to take at least two days per month to do some major LC cooking that can be stored in the freezer. Examples: chili verde, chicken stew, a big turkey, big meatballs, LC burritos. It can make the diff between LC turkey and pepperjack with fresh vegg quesadilla for me and kid vs..... junk or starving.
C3. I resolve to at least mention my food a minimum of 5 out of 7 days per week in my lowcarb journal. Inattention to my eating (and to eating at all) contributes to poorer upkeep of the matter.
C4. I resolve to arrange for my breakfast the night before, so it has pre-planning and is more likely to happen. This is the hardest meal of the day for me so far, but it hugely affects how hungry I am and the effort I will make to eat the rest of the day. Now that I know several foods I can prepare in bulk, there is no reason why I can't arrange for something, even if it's just a couple mini-muffins, a couple meatballs, whatever.
That is all for the FOOD category.
FOOD IS A TOOL: USE IT WISELY.
SECTION D: Others Others Others
D1. I resolve to make a list of the people I need to communicate with and to make a point to email or write them something at least every six weeks. I am falling out of touch with people who care about me and hurting their feelings. It does not take much effort! Just a little organization.
D2. I resolve to visit my grandmother for a couple hours at least once a month. She's old, she lives 5 blocks away, there is just no excuse for not doing so. Ry must come. She can read a book if she's bored but she needs to learn that this is a family responsibility. When I am old I hope someone visits ME.
That is all for the "others" category.
CHARITY STARTS AT HOME.
And that is my 2007 list of resolutions!
I AM QUEEN OF MY DESTINY! RULE WELL.
Here's to a fabulous 2007!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
Saturday, December 16
Be Prepared
I'm a pseudo-programmer, so prior to Y2K, reading about the possibilities, I wondered if I should worry. I was just about to decide not to when the government and media both bizarrely clammed up to the degree that THAT was abnormal, which scared me worse than anything I could have read. (Government: "Don't ask, don't tell" apparently applies to several things that could use leadership as an alternative...)
Anyway, for about 18 months prior to the date, I studied. I mean I read more internet and books about how to do EVERYTHING than you can imagine, and than I can believe, looking back. I read so much I don't even remember half of it and I normally have a good memory. But I know a lot more about everything from sanitation to childbirth, from injuries without medicine to how to build a sturdy wall from stones, how to bake without an oven if you have sun, a million things.
One of the things that really got me in my studies was that this idea most folks have, that our civilization is so immune from weather-related emergencies, is ridiculous. In fact, you'd be astounded by how many times huge numbers of people lose all power for quite a long time.
Reminds me of how in the '94 Northridge earthquake -- which nearly killed me I might add -- happened, just after, I was clinging to the wall of my back doorway. Everything had just stopped shaking, which nearly gave me sea legs adapting, I could hear the blood rushing through my head, and then the sky flashed vivid green and blue lightning like crazy! -- and then abruptly the whole world went blacker than it ever, ever is in a city.
It was transformers blowing out... all over the place... and I was about 70 miles from Northridge. Parts of CANADA and Northern states lost power over that!!
Back when I lived in Seattle, I remember Spokane Washington was out of power for like 5 days, maybe more. People froze, it was the dead of Winter.
This article talks about how recent winds "up to 69 mph!" (the tornado alley Oklahoman in me scoffs, haha! We have straight-line winds here that get up to that.) caused a power outtage in Seattle, in other parts of Washington, even parts of Oregon.
I wish people understood that having food, water, basic medicine, etc. is not just for the paranoid but a sanity check worth having. Especially if you have kids. If your power went out in the middle of winter -- stores closed, gas station closed, no just in time inventory, and mass competition from locals -- would you be ok? When your house was just over the temperature outside that is solid ice, would you be ok? Do you have a tent your family could sleep in to conserve the heat around you? I know people who have a couple electric blankets and a thin pretty bedcover. If they lose power in winter they'll wake up ice cubes. Will your neighbors be ok? Because they may need help and guess who they'll ask. Do you have medicine if you need it?
I know, this isn't lowcarb. The article just reminded me of all the reading I did prior to Y2K. Just like every house should have a fire alarm and a fire escape plan for everyone, every household should have some stored food and water, you can use it every so often after you've replaced it with newer stuff. It doesn't take much effort to proactively make small plans just in case it's ever needed.
When I was in 5th grade, we had the 'fire training'. My classmate Linda's house caught on fire just a few weeks later. She was the oldest of like 5 kids. Thanks to that training and the 'fire plan' she'd done for the assignment, she got her little siblings and led them out of the house to safety, crawling on the floor under all the smoke. The parents managed to get out their window or something, in a different direction. The house burned to the ground, not a shred of anything left. But they were all alive.
A little planning. That's all it takes.
(This has been a community service. haha!)
.
Anyway, for about 18 months prior to the date, I studied. I mean I read more internet and books about how to do EVERYTHING than you can imagine, and than I can believe, looking back. I read so much I don't even remember half of it and I normally have a good memory. But I know a lot more about everything from sanitation to childbirth, from injuries without medicine to how to build a sturdy wall from stones, how to bake without an oven if you have sun, a million things.
One of the things that really got me in my studies was that this idea most folks have, that our civilization is so immune from weather-related emergencies, is ridiculous. In fact, you'd be astounded by how many times huge numbers of people lose all power for quite a long time.
Reminds me of how in the '94 Northridge earthquake -- which nearly killed me I might add -- happened, just after, I was clinging to the wall of my back doorway. Everything had just stopped shaking, which nearly gave me sea legs adapting, I could hear the blood rushing through my head, and then the sky flashed vivid green and blue lightning like crazy! -- and then abruptly the whole world went blacker than it ever, ever is in a city.
It was transformers blowing out... all over the place... and I was about 70 miles from Northridge. Parts of CANADA and Northern states lost power over that!!
Back when I lived in Seattle, I remember Spokane Washington was out of power for like 5 days, maybe more. People froze, it was the dead of Winter.
This article talks about how recent winds "up to 69 mph!" (the tornado alley Oklahoman in me scoffs, haha! We have straight-line winds here that get up to that.) caused a power outtage in Seattle, in other parts of Washington, even parts of Oregon.
I wish people understood that having food, water, basic medicine, etc. is not just for the paranoid but a sanity check worth having. Especially if you have kids. If your power went out in the middle of winter -- stores closed, gas station closed, no just in time inventory, and mass competition from locals -- would you be ok? When your house was just over the temperature outside that is solid ice, would you be ok? Do you have a tent your family could sleep in to conserve the heat around you? I know people who have a couple electric blankets and a thin pretty bedcover. If they lose power in winter they'll wake up ice cubes. Will your neighbors be ok? Because they may need help and guess who they'll ask. Do you have medicine if you need it?
I know, this isn't lowcarb. The article just reminded me of all the reading I did prior to Y2K. Just like every house should have a fire alarm and a fire escape plan for everyone, every household should have some stored food and water, you can use it every so often after you've replaced it with newer stuff. It doesn't take much effort to proactively make small plans just in case it's ever needed.
When I was in 5th grade, we had the 'fire training'. My classmate Linda's house caught on fire just a few weeks later. She was the oldest of like 5 kids. Thanks to that training and the 'fire plan' she'd done for the assignment, she got her little siblings and led them out of the house to safety, crawling on the floor under all the smoke. The parents managed to get out their window or something, in a different direction. The house burned to the ground, not a shred of anything left. But they were all alive.
A little planning. That's all it takes.
(This has been a community service. haha!)
.
Wednesday, December 13
Gardening!!
OK, one of my other obsessions besides the lowcarb lifestyle is gardening. I wanted to show a new buddy on the lowcarber.org forum some pics of mine last summer, even though to be honest it wasn't really ideal looking at that moment (is it ever?), so I thought I would put a bunch of stuff here so I'd have a page on it and could reference it later maybe.
About the Garden!
First, I'm not getting on my hands and knees to garden, or I'll never get up. So I decided to make a STANDING garden.
Second, I wanted a BIG garden but didn't have a fortune for it. I thought of making those 4'x4' wood-things on legs, but they'd eventually get rickety, and mowing under/around them would be a pain.
Third, I wanted to do a combination of "Square Foot Gardening" and "Lasagna Gardening" -- all organic -- for my style. SFG has a heavy emphasis on "vertical" and "container" gardening, while LG has an emphasis on "layering" deep-as-possible soil.
So, I made a plan to have it built with cinderblocks. Which I thought was novel, fairly affordable, and I didn't have it mortared so I could redo it differently later if I wanted. It turns out lots of people do this, I just didn't know. :-)
My aunt runs a tiny landscaping business, so her crew came out built it for me. I failed to account for the un-movable laundry pole on one side, which resulted in one side being slightly (about 1 foot in both directions) smaller than the other but it's no big deal.
The various beds are different sizes. The two "big" beds are 32" high on the end parts, 24" high on the long parts and about 185+ square feet of soil.
The two "strawberry" beds are split in half depth-wise and are 16" and 24" high, about 48 square feet of soil.
I have a dozen 32 gallon rectangle "tub" planters (two for each arch and one at each side of the garden) that are about 24" high and 3 square feet of soil each. (36)
I have about ten 22 gallon round "tub" containers around the yard; they are each about 24" high and each about 2.5 square feet of soil. (22)
There's a wide variety of other tubs, pots and containers hanging around the garden area, sitting on the brick walls, and around the backyard, depending on the season. All told there is probably about 320-340 square foot of soil space in the garden. Which, since we do a lot of trellising, and a square foot approach, means we can have a LOT of volume. If we made the effort and did storage/canning/etc., we could probably grow enough food to feed 3 families nearly year round.
I was a bit optimistic regarding size. In reality the garden has become a part time job my soon to be ex husband did the last year. I will be revising its structure a bit to allow me to maintain a decent portion of it without having to hire someone, which I certainly can't afford!
I also have little flower beds in both back and front yard that are only 8" high and vary in size. All but the little flower beds are in 1/3 of my backyard, on a space laid out with wood-chip mulch, so it's a nice little environment to garden in, and you can reach everything.
The "garden props" aside from the cinderblock beds are:
1. Five 'cattle panels' bent in arches along the 6' wooden fence at the side. These panels themselves are four foot wide, 14 foot long, and they have a four inch "square grid" pattern, which is perfect for 'reaching through'. I bend them into arches which are 6 foot high and about 4 foot wide and 4 foot deep. You can walk inside them and pick stuff from inside, or from the outside.
They use 32 gallon dollar-store tubs as planters at the bottom of each side. I was told the freezing would crack the rubber-plastic but you know... it's been a few years and it hasn't happened. Get the cheap huge tubs of varying size from the dollar store, take a drill and put some holes in the bottom for drainage, and you have a good sized planter. I'm pretty sure the 32s ar storage tubs (they had lids). I also have some 22 gallon size that I think are squat laundry baskets, as they are round with rope handles on each side. Some plastic bottles from the trash and a couple dollar store big tubs and you can have a cool little container garden -- and using the "square foot" approach you can plant a lot more in that than the old-fashioned row-gardening might make ya think!
It's important in the summer to water planters more than you can imagine is needed, they dry out fast. If you don't have automated irrigation (I hope to get some!), this is really the best idea: get 2 litre plastic bottles or something similar, slice off the bottom. Bury it in the soil open-spout down. Each time you water, 'fill up' the containers with your hose. The water will drain into the soil at the rate it can absorb. It's not a mosquito issue because the water won't sit long. And in the summer when it's insanely hot, the plants really need water, and unless you plan on watering them four times a day, they won't get enough.
2. A six foot diameter, ten foot tall, metal green arbor-thing in the center of the garden. In the middle of it are various pots. Next to each of the three supports are small tub planters that grow stuff that trellises up the arbor. This thing is so beautiful! I gotta get a better pic of it. This year I think, despite all the warnings from people about a billion weed seedlings in my veggie beds, I may vine morning glories or other viney-flowers up it.
3. Copper tubing (1.25" hollow plumber's tubing) frames the 'big' bed on the right side, only the 'long' portion of it. Army parachute cord (thick, slightly stretchy, never biodegrades, essentially indestructible except by knife) is what I use as the ties. I use the copper framing and ties, some anchored to stakes in the soil, for the tomato plants that grow in that section. We get very high straight-line winds in NE Oklahoma, and sometimes hail and major downpours, so every tomato plant has to have decent anchor or the first major storm would wipe out the crop. The pepper plants on the other hand are difficult to kill. Except occasionally by critters like rabbits and turtles (the high beds at least minimize those!).
See the pic above under the "beds" info for the copper framing and round arbor pic.
4. We have a 16 foot long, 8 foot high, 4 foot wide "grapevine arbor" made of 2x4s (some treated, some not) and chicken coop fencing. Ugly, but workable. We just planted this a year ago, 1 year vines, so we will not see a crop for another year or two. We have about 8 different varieties, seedless and regular, a variety of colors.
Outside of the garden beds and props we also have a few "thornless blackberry" bushes we just put in a year ago.
What I hope to do this spring
Get a copy of SEED SAVERS catalog or another similar organization. This stuff is worth supporting. Did you know there's like a bazillion varieties of PEAS? I mean, who knew?! It'll amaze you.
Last winter I had massive seeds, for the best versions of tomatoes (red, pink, orange, yellow, white, black, purple, and several cherries...) and peppers (too many varieties to count!) and tons of flower seeds. I think it's possible my husband overused them or didn't care for them well so I might have to re-buy and trade this year.
Don't buy most of the junky seeds in stores. Most of them are deliberately engineered to not reproduce true. Unless they are quick salad stuff or marked "heirloom" seeds... why pay monster corps. Sometimes there's something special that is ultra-hybrid and you want it just for that but otherwise, support heirloom seeds!
SEED SAVERS www.seedsavers.org is a non-profit org that has done more to save seed varieties from literally vanishing from availability than anybody. (Don't think the government is really doing this. They pretend. Vested interests in favor of making all humans dependent on major corps for food, and one-use-only seeds, prevent the government being all that good for our people at all in this area.) (I am not really paranoid, this is just something you learn when you study it enough!) The current Seed Savers catalog has 667 varieties and this is mostly just food seeds. Now mind you, it's not the cheapest to buy from that kind of source; there are many far more economical ways to get seeds, not only for you, but for the die-hards keeping them pure, saving them and selling them each year. But I try to buy some every year just as a form of support. You have to be a member to get the catalog which is an annual donation. To find other similar groups, google "seed save". To find other sources of great seeds, google "heirloom seeds".
When January comes and I get into my Winter Sowing obsession, I will see if I can post a list of awesome links for getting seeds online including unusual cool stuff.
GARDENWEB www.gardenweb.com is the greatest contribution to gardening online. Even if you don't pay for their membership (which is not much and you can buy real short periods) you can read their forums for free. "Soil" is one of my fave forums ("You know you're a compost whacko when..."), but they have EVERYTHING. I mean... search by seed or plant type, by gardening style, even by hobby (garden art? winter sowing?), you name it. It's amazing and the people are often very nice (if you don't get them arguing about obscure trivia on plant species or composting that you can't just imagine anybody worrying enough about to argue -- but then, lowcarbers argue just for the fun of it too sometimes it seems!). They even have a "trade" area where you can offer extra seeds to folks who might want them, or ask for others' extras, or trade something you have more of for something you want, etc.
Now that I'm lowcarb, growing a zillion scallions (they are getting EXPENSIVE in the stores!!) and colored bell peppers and tons of peppers of ALL kinds, and some green veggies and strawberries and squash and salad veggies has taken on even more value for me.
If you don't know much about gardening and want to start out with something small but a variety and fun, check out the SQUARE FOOT GARDENING website. Get the book -- it's probably ultracheap used -- it's a nice, easy but interesting read. Scroll down the page on that link and look at all the pictures, cool eh. Mel Bartholomew, and 'square foot' guy, works with schools, with poor areas in foreign countries and more, showing them how to grow food in a minimum of soil and a minimum of space with a maximum of yield. Square foot is a really great gardening approach for kids, too. Don't miss actually marking your squares. I don't know why but psychologically and visually it just seems so much neater and easier when you do, silly eh!
OK, my connection on gardening to lowcarb is, obviously, FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD, and did I mention that the Zucchini Pie (one of the recipes on this blog) is SO INCREDIBLY GOOD that I intend to grow bunches of zucchini this year? I was never into it before. I was never into cauliflower either but ... well, you know!
January is when I get into "winter sowing" -- that means, planting seeds in a way to let them "grow if they will" in the real environment, so instead of laboriously babying seeds and seedlings in spring, you have a whole bunch of plants that are ALREADY "hardy" and growing outdoors. I usually get my seeds then, and plan garden stuff, and become a total freak in excitement about it. :-)
.
About the Garden!
First, I'm not getting on my hands and knees to garden, or I'll never get up. So I decided to make a STANDING garden.
Second, I wanted a BIG garden but didn't have a fortune for it. I thought of making those 4'x4' wood-things on legs, but they'd eventually get rickety, and mowing under/around them would be a pain.
Third, I wanted to do a combination of "Square Foot Gardening" and "Lasagna Gardening" -- all organic -- for my style. SFG has a heavy emphasis on "vertical" and "container" gardening, while LG has an emphasis on "layering" deep-as-possible soil.
So, I made a plan to have it built with cinderblocks. Which I thought was novel, fairly affordable, and I didn't have it mortared so I could redo it differently later if I wanted. It turns out lots of people do this, I just didn't know. :-)
My aunt runs a tiny landscaping business, so her crew came out built it for me. I failed to account for the un-movable laundry pole on one side, which resulted in one side being slightly (about 1 foot in both directions) smaller than the other but it's no big deal.
The various beds are different sizes. The two "big" beds are 32" high on the end parts, 24" high on the long parts and about 185+ square feet of soil.
The two "strawberry" beds are split in half depth-wise and are 16" and 24" high, about 48 square feet of soil.
I have a dozen 32 gallon rectangle "tub" planters (two for each arch and one at each side of the garden) that are about 24" high and 3 square feet of soil each. (36)
I have about ten 22 gallon round "tub" containers around the yard; they are each about 24" high and each about 2.5 square feet of soil. (22)
There's a wide variety of other tubs, pots and containers hanging around the garden area, sitting on the brick walls, and around the backyard, depending on the season. All told there is probably about 320-340 square foot of soil space in the garden. Which, since we do a lot of trellising, and a square foot approach, means we can have a LOT of volume. If we made the effort and did storage/canning/etc., we could probably grow enough food to feed 3 families nearly year round.
I was a bit optimistic regarding size. In reality the garden has become a part time job my soon to be ex husband did the last year. I will be revising its structure a bit to allow me to maintain a decent portion of it without having to hire someone, which I certainly can't afford!
I also have little flower beds in both back and front yard that are only 8" high and vary in size. All but the little flower beds are in 1/3 of my backyard, on a space laid out with wood-chip mulch, so it's a nice little environment to garden in, and you can reach everything.
The "garden props" aside from the cinderblock beds are:
1. Five 'cattle panels' bent in arches along the 6' wooden fence at the side. These panels themselves are four foot wide, 14 foot long, and they have a four inch "square grid" pattern, which is perfect for 'reaching through'. I bend them into arches which are 6 foot high and about 4 foot wide and 4 foot deep. You can walk inside them and pick stuff from inside, or from the outside.
They use 32 gallon dollar-store tubs as planters at the bottom of each side. I was told the freezing would crack the rubber-plastic but you know... it's been a few years and it hasn't happened. Get the cheap huge tubs of varying size from the dollar store, take a drill and put some holes in the bottom for drainage, and you have a good sized planter. I'm pretty sure the 32s ar storage tubs (they had lids). I also have some 22 gallon size that I think are squat laundry baskets, as they are round with rope handles on each side. Some plastic bottles from the trash and a couple dollar store big tubs and you can have a cool little container garden -- and using the "square foot" approach you can plant a lot more in that than the old-fashioned row-gardening might make ya think!
It's important in the summer to water planters more than you can imagine is needed, they dry out fast. If you don't have automated irrigation (I hope to get some!), this is really the best idea: get 2 litre plastic bottles or something similar, slice off the bottom. Bury it in the soil open-spout down. Each time you water, 'fill up' the containers with your hose. The water will drain into the soil at the rate it can absorb. It's not a mosquito issue because the water won't sit long. And in the summer when it's insanely hot, the plants really need water, and unless you plan on watering them four times a day, they won't get enough.
2. A six foot diameter, ten foot tall, metal green arbor-thing in the center of the garden. In the middle of it are various pots. Next to each of the three supports are small tub planters that grow stuff that trellises up the arbor. This thing is so beautiful! I gotta get a better pic of it. This year I think, despite all the warnings from people about a billion weed seedlings in my veggie beds, I may vine morning glories or other viney-flowers up it.
3. Copper tubing (1.25" hollow plumber's tubing) frames the 'big' bed on the right side, only the 'long' portion of it. Army parachute cord (thick, slightly stretchy, never biodegrades, essentially indestructible except by knife) is what I use as the ties. I use the copper framing and ties, some anchored to stakes in the soil, for the tomato plants that grow in that section. We get very high straight-line winds in NE Oklahoma, and sometimes hail and major downpours, so every tomato plant has to have decent anchor or the first major storm would wipe out the crop. The pepper plants on the other hand are difficult to kill. Except occasionally by critters like rabbits and turtles (the high beds at least minimize those!).
See the pic above under the "beds" info for the copper framing and round arbor pic.
4. We have a 16 foot long, 8 foot high, 4 foot wide "grapevine arbor" made of 2x4s (some treated, some not) and chicken coop fencing. Ugly, but workable. We just planted this a year ago, 1 year vines, so we will not see a crop for another year or two. We have about 8 different varieties, seedless and regular, a variety of colors.
Outside of the garden beds and props we also have a few "thornless blackberry" bushes we just put in a year ago.
What I hope to do this spring
- Get drip irrigation set up so I don't have to water it myself much. I don't have time to keep the garden, as big as it is. I can get help with seedlings and harvesting, and mess with it along the way, but the overall landscaping of my house literally takes about 6 hours a day of twice watering in summer... something's gotta give!
- Add a long cinderblock bed the width of my front porch, just along in front of it, that I can fill with herb perennials (sage, rosemary, thyme, lavender, etc. etc.). I think going out to the porch chair with the smell of those would be awesome.
- Add a small veggie perennial square in the back yard for asparagus.
- Add a root perennial square in the backyard and let ginger and horseradish and whatever else battle it out. I won't put anything "perennial and spreading" in my primary beds.
- Possibly, plant a 5-fruit tree in the back corner of my yard right next to the giant pecan tree which I do believe is on its final days on this earth. If it wasn't the primary sunblock of summer I'd have it taken out before it is fully dead and falls, but... for now I'd just like to start something else in preparation.
Get a copy of SEED SAVERS catalog or another similar organization. This stuff is worth supporting. Did you know there's like a bazillion varieties of PEAS? I mean, who knew?! It'll amaze you.
Last winter I had massive seeds, for the best versions of tomatoes (red, pink, orange, yellow, white, black, purple, and several cherries...) and peppers (too many varieties to count!) and tons of flower seeds. I think it's possible my husband overused them or didn't care for them well so I might have to re-buy and trade this year.
Don't buy most of the junky seeds in stores. Most of them are deliberately engineered to not reproduce true. Unless they are quick salad stuff or marked "heirloom" seeds... why pay monster corps. Sometimes there's something special that is ultra-hybrid and you want it just for that but otherwise, support heirloom seeds!
SEED SAVERS www.seedsavers.org is a non-profit org that has done more to save seed varieties from literally vanishing from availability than anybody. (Don't think the government is really doing this. They pretend. Vested interests in favor of making all humans dependent on major corps for food, and one-use-only seeds, prevent the government being all that good for our people at all in this area.) (I am not really paranoid, this is just something you learn when you study it enough!) The current Seed Savers catalog has 667 varieties and this is mostly just food seeds. Now mind you, it's not the cheapest to buy from that kind of source; there are many far more economical ways to get seeds, not only for you, but for the die-hards keeping them pure, saving them and selling them each year. But I try to buy some every year just as a form of support. You have to be a member to get the catalog which is an annual donation. To find other similar groups, google "seed save". To find other sources of great seeds, google "heirloom seeds".
When January comes and I get into my Winter Sowing obsession, I will see if I can post a list of awesome links for getting seeds online including unusual cool stuff.
GARDENWEB www.gardenweb.com is the greatest contribution to gardening online. Even if you don't pay for their membership (which is not much and you can buy real short periods) you can read their forums for free. "Soil" is one of my fave forums ("You know you're a compost whacko when..."), but they have EVERYTHING. I mean... search by seed or plant type, by gardening style, even by hobby (garden art? winter sowing?), you name it. It's amazing and the people are often very nice (if you don't get them arguing about obscure trivia on plant species or composting that you can't just imagine anybody worrying enough about to argue -- but then, lowcarbers argue just for the fun of it too sometimes it seems!). They even have a "trade" area where you can offer extra seeds to folks who might want them, or ask for others' extras, or trade something you have more of for something you want, etc.
Now that I'm lowcarb, growing a zillion scallions (they are getting EXPENSIVE in the stores!!) and colored bell peppers and tons of peppers of ALL kinds, and some green veggies and strawberries and squash and salad veggies has taken on even more value for me.
If you don't know much about gardening and want to start out with something small but a variety and fun, check out the SQUARE FOOT GARDENING website. Get the book -- it's probably ultracheap used -- it's a nice, easy but interesting read. Scroll down the page on that link and look at all the pictures, cool eh. Mel Bartholomew, and 'square foot' guy, works with schools, with poor areas in foreign countries and more, showing them how to grow food in a minimum of soil and a minimum of space with a maximum of yield. Square foot is a really great gardening approach for kids, too. Don't miss actually marking your squares. I don't know why but psychologically and visually it just seems so much neater and easier when you do, silly eh!
OK, my connection on gardening to lowcarb is, obviously, FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD, and did I mention that the Zucchini Pie (one of the recipes on this blog) is SO INCREDIBLY GOOD that I intend to grow bunches of zucchini this year? I was never into it before. I was never into cauliflower either but ... well, you know!
January is when I get into "winter sowing" -- that means, planting seeds in a way to let them "grow if they will" in the real environment, so instead of laboriously babying seeds and seedlings in spring, you have a whole bunch of plants that are ALREADY "hardy" and growing outdoors. I usually get my seeds then, and plan garden stuff, and become a total freak in excitement about it. :-)
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