September 24, 2009 Thursday 'Feeling down'

I like my doctor, but he made fun of me because I lost so little from the last time I was weighed in the office. I remember saying that I weighed this time with my shoes on and losing even one pound is success for me. Still, I came away feeling down. In reality, it was success. I woke up feeling disappointed in myself. I could have done better. It has been years since I have lost, but I feel that I have failed myself. I know the truth, but someone I trust said "it is only a few pounds" and I am so depressed about what the scale said. The pleasure that I felt in losing that weight disappeared.

In the past, I would have immediately gone off my diet. I have not done so. I knew there would be times like this as the song goes. I knew there would be times I would be challenged. I have been eating those little tubs of low fat ice cream. They are truly very small and it is part of my plan to get off sugar. I will not be buying them anymore. I have bought some artificial sugar that I can put in my hot tea and will be using that. I can't use Splenda because it gives me the "runs" very badly. I am using something I got from Trader Joe's.

My eating plan changes as time goes on. I am going to be eating more food that I fix from scratch and less from the prepared food that I buy from the store. I never eat fast food and restaurant food is getting less and less as everyone else is eating less and less. When I do eat out, I usually eat an omelet and cottage cheese nowadays. Yesterday when I went to the store I bought some beef that was organic and some organic onions. I will be eating one full meal a day and snacking the rest of the day but nothing after 6pm. I drink a lot of decaffeinated coffee with half and half because there is no real amount of carbs in that. When I drink coffee with half and half I don't eat anything else.

It does feel better to talk about my talk with the doctor. We really get along pretty good. He was the only doctor that I did not have to educate on what Celiac Disease is. One doctor did not know and when I came back had not bothered to look it up. I never returned to her. This doctor knows. My women's doctor is really a nurse practitioner and has been my women's doctor since 1989 and I just adore her. She knows about alternative medicine which is great.

I don't want to lose weight fast for if I did I would have loose folds of skin as those who have those operations to lose weight. There will be times that I will not lose at all. I just have to keep going. My exercise plan is certainly not great and needs a lot of improvement. I can't listen to anyone but me. Maybe that is why I don't mind that I don't have any readers on this blog. No one is saying you should not be using half and half for your coffee but non-fat. Well, I would have to explain that for me the carb count is the most important and I am lowering that every day.
Part of becoming healthier is changing how I look at food and how I look at me. I can tell that has changed.

September 11, 2009 Friday-'Medical appointment'

I saw the nurse practitioner I see for woman's health. I have been seeing her since 1989 when I moved to this area. I tried once more to see if there was anyway I could get help in losing weight, but she was truthful in that resources were even more limited than I had first thought. She took time to deal with my questions and I know she was being told not to spend that much time with her patients. Again, I know I will have to do this on my own. I just don't feel confident that I know what I am doing. It is very possible, that the current state of medicine might not have the answers that I need anyhow.

The only program that the clinic has for over-weight are a series of meetings in which 30 to 40 men gather in a small room and are led through talks by a dietitian who has already told me in front of all of those men that my chosen diet of low carbohydrates was not the way to go. I needed to count calories. When I did talk with her privately I told her that I had celiac disease and she told me that I still needed to stay on a diet of counting calories and eat a breakfast of cereal that was high in fiber. People with celiac disease cannot eat meals the same way as normal people can. She also made fun of me in front of the men which encouraged the other men to do the same. Dietitians generally do not understand the eating requirements of a gluten-free diet.

I find it very uncomfortable to be in a room full of men and to be made fun of and to be in a program that is geared for the same diet for everyone especially since men are so much different than women. Not only do I get frightened by the large number of men in the closed up room, but I am angry at the way I am treated. I see no reason for the dietitian to treat me in that way.

The nurse practitioner did mention that I will have to do a combination of diet and exercise. Obviously, I am finding it difficult to get the exercise component going. I also have a close relative who is having trouble in his life and I am being sucked into his problems. It is not his life but my own fault. I need to step back and let him find his own way and not interfere.

I am not going to say that I am not scared and that I know what I am doing. I have no idea how I am going to get healthier. I am on the list for surgery to lose weight, but there are no studies that show it would even work on me. I don't want to go through it and find out that I can't lose it. Besides, once you go through the surgery, you have to have plastic surgery to fix the folds of fat. I would rather just lose the weight normally. I have been on that list for three years and I it will be four or more years until my name comes up and then I will be too old anyway.

Knowing that there are no readers for my blog is nice right now. I have been reading the blogs of other and have been impressed by them. It gives me the freedom to say the things I have been saying. I am imagining what others might be thinking if they are reading this but glad no one is.

I bought some cookbooks today at a second hand store and will be doing more work in the kitchen next month. Right now I am eating meals that are prepared and frozen. It is like having a cook in the house. It used to be that gluten free frozen meals did not exist, but there are several that can be purchased. None of them have a lot of carbs.

I am going to weigh myself at least once a week at the clinic. I can't get my blood pressure checked that often, but I have a doctor's appointment on the 23red. I am sure I will have to take another blood sugar test. I did get a this device for measuring it, but then I got a note that said it did not work. Although I hate putting down the weight down, I will do it.

September 8, 2009 'Nightmares'

Last night I had nightmares. It was a direct result of the work I did in here about my family's meals as a child. I had not thought about my family or mealtimes with them for a long time. When I got irritated about reading Donald Altman's experiences as a child that he described in his book, "Art of the Inner Meal", with his family and the Jewish ritual meal, itself, I had decided to dig into my own reaction to his descriptions. I did not sleep well either.

You would think that events that happened so long ago with people now deceased would not have that much of an effect, but taking the lid off of the jar that has events that have been festering for years does have the same reaction as when you take the lid off a jar that has food spoiling for a long time. Whew! Yet, it has to be done otherwise it just sits there. Someone might say, just throw it away and be done with it. Oh, if only it was that easy. We would not have needed the Sigmund Freuds and Carl Jungs of this world. They could have gone into other areas of medicine. Every morning we could have special trash trucks that would pick up our discarded jars of unwanted memories and things that are too painful to recollect. The mind just does not work that way except in those rare exceptions when some people forget all memories in the last few minutes.

"Dear, I am ready for breakfast."

"You ate breakfast already."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"Then how come I am still hungry."

"Because it is lunchtime."

"Oh."

I had an ex-husband that when I was married to him, he thought I was foolish in trying to remember things from my past. I would quote Socrates: "An unexamined life is not worth living." He was not very nice in that he would deny things that did happen just to fool around with my mental health. I did not catch on to that for a very long time. I guess I did not want that part to be true. After all, you want your spouse to be your best friend. He had a point that the nightmares that I had last night illustrate only too well. When you uncover something so awful, so distasteful well it kicks back like an unruly horse. I got kicked last night.

One of the dreams that I had was that I was in a Senior Citizen Hall and everyone was leaving. I stayed behind for some reason. I was toward the end of the room and I heard a rustling behind these brown thin curtains. I lifted them up and there were these large, almost armored fish living behind and in the curtains. Now that I think about it in the daylight of today, it seems a bit silly; but it was a nightmare last night. I tried to call out to the others what I had discovered. Instead of living in water, they were living in these unsightly curtains. The curtains were so familiar. I still do not remember them and have none in my house as I favor blinds. These curtains were too long for the windows. The reasons I don't like curtains is that they carry dust. All you have to do is vacuum blinds. They looked like tarp and had different hues of color mostly green. I may have seen them in restaurants like The Grand Buffet. Instinctively, I knew they were connected to the work I did with my family's meals.

Maybe I overeat to compensate for not having food in the first place, but I do have Celiac Disease which is a form of starving which is ironic when you think about it. I can't get enough food so I overeat. I try taking vitamins but never found any that did not give me a severe case of the runs. In fact, lots of things give me a severe case of the runs including Splenda. I also take some medication to help with a small amount of seizures which has a side affect of taking away of one's appetite. It does not work in helping lose weight. I never took that medication before because I so rarely got the seizures but that is because I kept my blood sugar high which seemed to help. I rarely keep my blood sugar high anymore which is why I now have to take the medication. I do know that I am scared to be hungry, but that is another subject.

I don't like thinking of my parents, eating with them and that sort of thing. Heavens know what kind of issues they had themselves. Years later, my mother was always trying to feed me which was strange. She would get mad if she found out that I liked Chinese food (which I did) and preferred to eat in restaurants instead of her house which I did. She ate out a lot when she could but it was after the death of my father.

It is unknown where all of this will lead me. I am not going to worry about it. I am going to take one day at a time. I do know that the more I write about this process, the easier it is. One of the things I have learned is not to listen to anyone. I listen to me. I do take under advisement what others say especially my doctor who I trust, but I take to heart what the Buddha Gautama said and that is to run everything people say through one's heart and mind and if it rings true accept it and if it does not throw it out.