Identify what is most important )0( Eliminate everything else
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. Dr. Paul Farmer
The suffering of others is not alleviated when no one knows about it.
There is no one right way to live. Daniel Quinn Ishmael
The only thing that you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right sort of people.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

23rd day of striving towards health

BREAKFAST
If you sleep until 11:30 a.m., there is no such meal.

LUNCH
I was not hungry, so between noon-ish and 4:00 p.m. I had:
bowl of chili
pickled vegetables
4 ounces of left-over steak

DINNER
bowl of chili
apple

The meat was difficult to eat.  I wanted to stop after the first two bites, but I did manage to eat the whole piece.  I really did take me those nearly four hours to eat that stuff.

This lack of hunger bothers me so, in between bits of eating, I researched lack of appetite in regards to dieting.  The most frequent thing I found was that eating too few calories shoves you into that controversial starvation mode.  It makes sense, but it has the ring of too easy of an excuse for a lot of things about cutting back on what we eat.  I am not a scientist, just a science nerd, so what the heck do I know.

The web site that made the most sense to me was one with which I registered.  Based on my weight and how responsibly, gradually and permanent I want my weight loss to be, I am supposed to be eating 2300 calories each day.

Hell, I did not eat that much when I was eating anything that did not move.  My current weight certainly has a close relationship with savory things and anything that you can dip into it.  Salty and crunchy are my all-time favorite things to eat, especially if you can put sour cream on them. 

The bulk of my former diet was beans, legumes, seeds, grains and dark vegetables.  Cutting out the carbohydrates left me hungry and frantic for food at times.  I resisted and then almost immediately had trouble rousing my appetite. 

I figured...still do, although today's reading has informed me otherwise...that if I am not hungry, then my body does not need food, which almost instantly brought back some memories.

Aside from over eating, I would not say, or believe, that I have any other eating disorder.  Except that I now remember a year or more when I was intentionally not eating enough. I would pick at food, break it up, move it around the plate and clear my plate into the garbage as soon as I could.

I cannot believe that I had forgotten this stuff.  It was about 26 years ago and was a time when I knew that I could not escape my marriage and all that meant and whilst I convinced myself that I was going to be more fit, slimmer and hopefully more attractive to my ex, and hopefully less hated as well, near the end I came to understand that I was trying to starve myself so that I could escape one way or the other.  I only stopped because it meant that I would be leaving our child unprotected.  The truth is that if I stayed there, he would concentrate on me and not her.  The few times I went out for a lunch or an activity with friends, I would come home to hearing that if I had stayed home he would not be bothered by having to watch our daughter.  He also told me that if I wanted to do anything outside the house that I had to beg him to do so.  I thought he was joking (yes, that is how stupid I was) and he told me that every man wants that. 

Oh, I can remember exactly how he said it and how he shifted his weight in his chair, the same thing he did later just before something bad happened.  Is that when that physical shift started or just that I am remember it now.  It was that movement that propelled me backwards out of the house that last day.

At that time of starving, it was as though I felt that eating was the only control I had in my life.  As long as I cooked what he wanted, I could eat too.  What a fucking mess.  How did I survive all of that.  What unobserved damage have I done to our daughter, my daughter.  It is no wonder, no great stretch to imagine how greatly we have been damaged. 

Well, here we are.  I think that one of the best parts of having this now-new life is that I get to make amends with her.  I get the chance to make everything that happens from now on be different and supportive and whilst there was so much love back then, love can shower over both of us.  Heal us as much as that is possible. 

Man, all I an trying to do is become more fit, more healthy and all this stuff is unearthed.  I wonder how much more there is to be remembered.  All I have to say is that it would be nice if the memories came rushing back on days when I am doing well.

Enough.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, 2300 calories a day.  I understand the reason for not cutting calories so drastically and I will try to eat more, even though I do not have an appetite. 

I am finished with all of that wonderful, seasonal and cheap fruit, but the apple I ate for dinner was nice and crunchy and I felt absolutely no need to put sour cream on it. :)

I am going to keep snack-sized zipper bags of my nut mix around and will eat those, raw vegetables and apples during the day.  All three of those can go with me wherever I wander, so I have no excuse for finding myself with only drive-through choices.  Insanely, the drive-through item I want, crave, the most is those blended coffee drinks, all icy and sweet and delicious.

I will be walking to the shelter tomorrow to deliver research I did for one of the other advocates.  I could drive, but I want to see if I can walk that bit-over-a-mile.  I will be taking lots of meds beforehand, and taking lots of water with me.  After last week's successes, I will be trying to convince myself to take on new challenges.  Crapynappy, I cannot walk there.  I have two other errands to take care of in the morning.  No matter, there will be new opportunities.

I do not remember what I needed to write about today.  Something.  Maybe it was a though of something that brought me to the other stuff. 

I do want to eat more food.  It is healthier and it will help me lose weight more quickly and efficiently, although all of this is really not about the weight.  Not so much.  I want to get back the good health that I have enjoyed until recently, although it is clear that I have not appreciated and supported it the way I should have been doing.  Interesting that I could get to this age with so little health and body stuff to worry me.

I am glad that I am taking these monthly weeks off from my library jobs.  I need to have four days in a row to nap and do other things, as soon as I think of some things to do.  I am planning to walk downtown on Wednesday.  Return my library materials, sit in the square, get coffee from the sandwich place.  Watch people, read, walk home.  Spend more time on the porch.  Just be outside these walls.

2 comments:

  1. Just thinking of you...no advice or comment other than I like the last paragraph the best
    xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Walking is the best exercise I reckon, I really need to get out and start again. Your ex = fuckwit..just sayin' ♥

    ReplyDelete