Category Archives: health

jump start

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So, a few observations have crept up on me this fall / early winter.

I got on the scale a week or so ago and saw numbers that I’d never seen.
I went to the doctor for commonplace prescription refill and my weight & triglycerides were a topic of discussion.
I put on a dress for a presentation to Japanese auditors last week and literally felt like I’d been zipped into a corset all day – I couldn’t breathe. (It’s worth noting that this is a sleeveless tweed that I used to wear over long-sleeved t-shirts with boots because it was 2 sizes too big.)
We took a photo with aforementioned Japanese auditors at dinner and my face was like a round pale moon floating over my dish of eggplant parm.

I try to be health conscious. I rarely eat fast food, I exercise 3-4 days a week, I’m active, I do my own yardwork and housework. I run, I cook at home, I eat whole foods.

Oh, I gained the Freshman 15 (or 20) and I’ve gone through periods of my life where my weight has fluctuated. It’s always resolved itself, though, with a few very minor tweaks. And I’ve always been able to throw down on a pizza or a pumpkin pie with gusto and not feel or see any real effects.
Several years ago, during my ramp-up into regular running, and then during my divorce a year or so later, weight just melted off me and wouldn’t stay on. I got too thin, then bounced back to a healthy, happy weight, and from there it’s just been a gradual climb.

And this year the struggle has been real to even stay within the upper range of that healthy weight, and in the last six months, I have to admit that it’s gotten away from me.
I know that some of it is the natural aging process combined with hormone issues related to my contraceptive of choice, but everything I’ve tried – counting calories on my own, increasing exercise, limiting sugar – has not worked.

I pride myself on not being one to sit on my heels and wait for things to get worse, so, in an effort to stall the gradual but steady weight gain, I gave myself a firm talking-to. If something isn’t working, you have to figure out something that DOES, so – four days ago – I signed up for a month of Weight Watchers.

It might be rash to do this immediately before the holidays but once my mind is set, I don’t want to wait and dig myself deeper into a hole. I find it interesting that a few years ago, I tried to sign up for WW and couldn’t – they considered me already at or below my ideal healthy weight. My, how times have changed.

So I enrolled in the new Freestyle program and four days in, I’m finding it both easy / convenient and hellish at the same time. I love that I can track on my iPhone app, and that it connects to my Garmin to log my steps and workouts and give me activity points. I love that there are tons of zero-point foods so I don’t feel hungry, exactly (I just feel angry). I love that I have weekly points and rollover points so I can allocate treat meals or treat days or snacks and know that it will come out in the weekly wash, good days and less good days.
I know that it will get easier and I will feel less hateful and depressed. But right now I am in the first throes of deprivation, full of lean protein and vegetables and sadly lacking in carbs, alcohol, and sugar.

Cheers to getting and staying healthy and a jump start to 2018.

dieting.

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2016-09-12_160523671_0c0ef_ios

lunchtime run + meditation time at the botanical gardens; treasure the weather while it lasts.

So I’m back counting calories and steps with my trusty My Fitness Pal. I launched quite a diet & exercise offensive earlier this summer, in order to be able to wear a bikini on our vacation in North Carolina, but with several weeks of tracking, I really only lost about 3 lbs. I was relieved to give it up after vacation and go back to eating and drinking whatever I damn well felt like. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the 3 lbs coming back on, as well as a little extra.

I’ve always had a good metabolism and weight was never much of a worry for me until about the last year and a half. When I started running a lot in 2010, my body changed, became much leaner. Then, after several years, everything evened out  my body got used to all of that running and exercising, and adjusted accordingly. I’ve gone from, at my lowest, most unhealthy point, about 20 lbs under my ideal weight to about 10 lbs over that ideal weight since I turned 40.

Well, I thought to myself, training for my half ought to help this situation. Turns out it hasn’t.

Portion control, meal preparation and planning, and careful assessment of my nutritional mix plus daily exercise – that’s what works for me. I use Map My Run and My Fitness Pal to track my calories and plan my meals. I like seeing my daily food diary laid out so I can ensure that I am getting what I need – protein, whole grains, fruits & veggies, and enough water. Map My Run syncs with My Fitness Pal so when I log workouts, I see the calories come off my day, and I can make adjustments.

The problem with all of this is that food equals happiness and comfort and satisfaction for me. I don’t eat a lot of junk food. I don’t eat fast food more than once every couple of months, I don’t drink soda, I don’t eat bags of potato chips or cookies. But I do love cheese, and if I want to smash up an avocado and eat it on toast or with crackers, or mixed in pasta with red pepper flakes and pesto and olive oil, I want to be able to do that. I love red wine and pizza and bread, and after I run at lunchtime, I like wandering down to the cafeteria and having the chef whip me up a veggie and cheese quesadilla with a big handful of thick kettle chips. I like ice cream and pie a couple times a week. I feel like my mental issue is that I’m not a terrible eater – by and large I like healthy things, but I like them ALL THE TIME. In order to succeed in losing weight, I have to change my mindset from seeing food as self-love to seeing it as fuel, which is extremely dissatisfying.
But things must be done and so for the foreseeable future I will be packing lunch for myself (I don’t love processed food, but a Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine at lunch helps keep me on track – typically I only choose the vegetarian options, and actually a couple of them – these and these – are pretty good) and planning my meals on my little phone apps and trying to move more and drink more water and not turn into a shrieking harpy because I can’t have my Dove chocolate or large pour of cab sav.

strep

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03.2016_back road field

I sneezed three times on Tuesday afternoon, and one of them was a hard sneeze that hurt the back of my throat and made me wince. I thought idly on the way home that sneezing like that even once usually means I am getting sick. I felt fine, though, so I used my neti pot before bed and thought nothing more of it.

By Wednesday midday I felt like I’d been beaten with a stick, and swallowing was a misery of broken glass shards. I went home early, crept into bed, and stayed there until I forced myself to Urgent Care first thing Thursday morning. If I could have drooled helplessly on myself to avoid the flaming cavern of agony that resulted from swallowing, I would have.

Urgent Care was, as usual, a gallery of crazy although I suppose I looked no different, hunched over my knitting and whimpering every time I had to swallow my spit. The nurse took some swabs (which hurt like hell) and ran the tests. “You have strep!” the doctor cheerfully announced as he bustled in a few minutes later. I resisted the urge to say “NO SHIT SHERLOCK GIVE ME MY DRUGS” but merely smiled and nodded. He flashed a penlight into my mouth and said, “Yep! That’s an easy one! Look at all of those white spots! Look at those tonsils! Textbook.”

Although the doctor told me that I couldn’t give strep throat to children, that they are usually the carriers and the contagion is reserved for adults, GB kindly took  Miss L so that there was no chance. Plus, I could barely lift my head off the pillow.

I’ve been on the antibiotics for a full 24 hours and while I do feel better than I did yesterday, when I rocked up to Urgent Care and nearly throttled the kindly doc for my antibiotics, I’m still reeling. This strep came on fast and hit me hard and took me out at the knees. My throat is still on fire and although I can knock it back with ibuprofen, at least enough to swallow, I was expecting a much more rapid improvement. I also missed a day of work when I can scarcely afford to, with two board meetings next week, one the following week, and no time to prepare all of the agendas, packets, and presentations that I am responsible for.

I’m hoping another dose of antibiotics will give me less pain and more energy, but in the meantime, I am tucked up in bed with my (admittedly indifferent) nursemaids and a book.

3.2016_sleepy boyz

blunt force treatments and glass boxes.

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magic in the city.

magic in the city.

It started out as a small patch that itched and felt like a heat rash. By yesterday midday, it had grown to a fist-sized area of maddening vesicles surrounded by a bruise. I walked into the Assistant General Counsel’s office to ask her about something and before I could finish my sentence, she was eyeing me.

“What the fuck are you digging at on your back?” she demanded.

I hadn’t noticed I was absently scratching while I talked to her.

“Lemme see,” she said, and I shut the door so I could lift up my shirt and show her the patch.

“Yeah, that’s shingles,” she said. “Call your fucking doctor and get in right away, cuz if you’re not already in terrible pain, you will be soon.”

And lo, I found myself at my old familiar Urgent Care. It seems to be exclusively staffed with eastern European doctors who are prone to viewing my ailments as invading armies that must be stamped out and annihilated with blunt force. No delicate sophisticated treatments for them; they prescribe me antibiotics the size of horse pills, a scorched earth strategy of leaving no small writhing germ behind. I like that.

In retrospect, it has been a pretty stressful summer, both at work and on the romantic front, so it’s not surprising that I find myself in bed dizzy and drowsy with antivirals, slathered in lidocaine cream. There have been scandals and sackings at work, investigations and interviews with stone-faced executives who tell you later behind closed doors that they just wish someone would take this cup from them. And on the romantic front, a meeting and a break up and a make up with someone that I am frighteningly fond of, and all the complications that arise from that.

Dating at my age and as a divorced working mom is an adventure and not for the thin-skinned. The men I’ve met have also been divorced and with children, only they’ve been divorced for much longer than I have. They seem open to having a relationship, to letting someone in, but being on their own has hardened them somehow. They say the right things, they do the right things, their hearts are right there, but closed off somehow, in a glass box. I can see it, but I can’t touch it. They know they can do it on their own, they have made homes and a family for their children, they are wary and protective of having that disturbed, even positively, by another factor to balance.

And I completely understand it because I feel the same way. I know I can survive. I love my home, I know I can make it on my own and be happy with Miss L and my job and the blessings that I have; I want more, but that ‘more’ will have to be pretty incredible, and it won’t come at the expense of what I’ve already earned through blood, sweat, and tears. However, I’m still flexible, and open, and the men I date, their glass boxes have grown heavier, shatterproof. I see that and I don’t want to become that. I don’t know how you date and not grow increasingly protective and closed off, but it seems that at some point, you have to be able to let things penetrate, even if it’s scary and hard.

So I have been spending time with a man that I really like. It’s a challenge, there have been stops and starts and many feelings of ‘this is too hard’ for both of us. But so far, we have struggled through it, and I am hopeful that our friendship will last. I’ve let him into my house, which is a huge step for me, to let someone see the flaws and beauty and small chaos where my private heart lives. A couple of times, I’ve had to tell myself, ‘I’m really proud of you, this is a big step, I know that everything isn’t perfect but it’s okay to let someone see that’. Deep breath, open the door, let someone in.

It’s nice to have someone to go for walks with and sit on the porch with, and see movies with. I don’t know if it will be more than that, but time will tell if we’re able to continue the process of letting each other in. I feel good about going slow with that. It’s hard enough to trust a single person, and incorporate them into your life; we have to know we can do that before we start with other aspects. I hope our glass boxes slowly dissipate, but for right now, it’s enough that we can meet in the middle and know we can survive.