Thursday, March 21, 2019

Yesterday, the SILs and I went to Matlacha (pronounced "mat" "la" "shay", emphasis on "mat"). It is an artist community with little shops and classes for those so inclined. One of the artists is Leoma Lovegrove. See the picture of a trailer she painted below which is displayed in the garden behind her shop. Nice afternoon.

DH went to daycare and had a good time. He was in fairly good spirits but is taking 25 mg of Risperidone twice a day since he was nasty and aggressive on Tuesday morning. We had been watching for it to happen around the full-moon, which is today. I plan to continue it for another couple of days then stop and see what happens.

Today might include a short trip to the area near us by the water and/or the pool. Sunny weather is predicted. Have thinking Thursday!

Great to hear Paul had a better day ! Glad you are using the medication to get him through the full moon. I receive an inspirational text of the day every day. Today's really resonated with me !

Serenity is what we get when we quit hoping for a better past.

I can do lots of work around that mantra for sure !

Good morning! Sorry I missed yesterday. By the time I logged on it was later in the evening and I decided to wait until today.

Ocean Diane, your daily text for today is AWESOME and on point for me. I spent a lot of time focused on the past and in fantasy about the future. I still have to remind myself to focus on the hear and now and the positive.

Food is better. Water intake is up. The creeping crud and mung is still lingering. I'm also dealing with mild asthma symptoms and have been using my inhaler 3 times per day. Booooo! I went for over a year without using it at all, but this flu thing really got me good! I promised myself I would call the doctor today, if I wasn't significantly better. Guess I better call. I have no voice, (can't sing a note, which is no bueno for me who sings the better part of the day), I still have a cough, my throat now hurts when I swallow, and I have a head and chest full of snot! Booooo, again!

Exercise brag - did a wall sit for 1 minute 20 seconds yesterday. More impressive because it was the last wall sit in a set of alternating squats and wall sits.

I am slowly, but surely, becoming more and more comfortable with accepting my addictive food behavior. The more I become comfortable, the more I realize complete abstinence may be the road to follow - however nervous and uptight that makes me. I figure, if I can do it with cigarettes, surely sugar and carbs won't be as awful! Always thinking.

Liz, so glad you had good day yesterday and glad that Paul had one, too.

Ocean Diane, I think it's wonderful that you are looking into long term rentals. Isn't the freedom of retirement wonderful?

Ann, I miss your sassy self. Check in soon!

BB, enjoy your in-between while you can. It won't last with Noodle coming in 10 weeks. Nugget and Noodle will keep you forever busy, so enjoy this last bit of only child time with Baby Becca!

I am aiming for a Thursday filled with thoroughness- a Thursday to see things through!

Greetings Nice People

Thats what my childhood friend's dad used to always say.

Down two pounds to 154.5. About the only good thing about having this hideous cold is loss of appetite. I had to make myself drink some bone broth. Tasted like sludge. Peps, sorry your cold has dragged on for so long. Yep, call the doctor. I would do so except there is nothing they can do for me. Just the basic vicious cold complete with body aches and non stop nose issues. I had planned to go to the studio but think I will be kind to others and skip it. Gallery duty tomorrow - plans unknown.

Liz what a cool van that is. Bet this artist has great stuff. Glad DH has had a couple of good days and that you have some fun.

Nice message for the day Ocean Diane. So glad you are able to get a big dose of mother nature and sun.

Midwest flooding pictures are astonishing. Huge ice jams. My brother and his wife have to ration water - I guess because the water works on the river has been affected.

Well shel, looking forward to seeing you but you might not enjoy seeing me blow my nose every 15 seconds.

Take care all. I might commit the sin of eating a piece of toast. Diane S

187.6

I blame the allergies and the sore throat

Diane-sorry you're not feeling well, but it's nice to see a lower number, eh?

Peps-good job on the exercise!

Liz-sorry about rough start yesterday but glad DH seems to be better today

Paula, Shel, Ann, David, et al-hi and please come play with us!

I don't have much to share, again. But I am having a more optimistic day. I'm trying to convince my parents to plan a trip to Europe. There's always so many reasons why they "shouldn't." I'm sure we all identify with this--always work to be done, money could be spent elsewhere, etc. But I think they need something to look FORWARD to, don't we all?

totally off-topic random musing would be I wonder if the rest of you have noticed a generational shift with people my age and younger. I'm in the legal profession and so much is dependent on networking, and taking pride in our profession, and giving back to the community--and yet I've noticed in so many of the professional organizations in which I'm involved, there has been a DRASTIC decline in participation over the course of the last 3-5 years (about paralleling with people my parents' age retiring). I think this is very unfortunate. Maybe I'm the one behind? But I also think those very crucial soft skills like professionalism and ethics, and communication, etc. are being lost!!

But I still enjoyed last night's meeting. Maybe less competition at these things will be a boon to me? Today I had the opportunity to visit my alma mater law school and heard about a job opportunity that made me scratch my head. Not sure I've practiced enough to bring enough to the table to actually apply (but shhhhhh on that just in case) but it did get me excited for future opportunities that might crop up.

I do have one weight loss subject that came up recently. I don't believe obesity was the outcome of addiction for me. I'm not sure if it is for some? I guess I struggle with giving it that broad label for a few reasons, and I very humbly offer my (uneducated?) opinion and would like some kind feedback.

First, I think the way our individual metabolisms work is too complex to look at the output and be able to definitively say "yep, addiction." For that matter, I don't think you can accurately look at someone's size/bmi/weight/body fat percent and tell how much they eat/their caloric intake. At best, you can only tell whether someone is eating above and beyond their own individual basal metabolic rate. Someone may consume 1600 calories per day and eat very clean and be 20lbs. overweight, and another may eat 2500 calories of junk and be underweight. Secondly, I believe people eat for a variety of reasons. My husband is a very "normal" eater. He weighed about 205 two weeks ago and now is 196. He might be 176 byt he end of summer. I have no doubt that he is not addicted to food. But sometimes he just overindulges and enjoys and then his pants get too tight, so he reigns it back in. My parents are also this type of overweight people. I think my weight battle was (is?) multi-faceted, but I still don't think I am or was addicted. I think mine was largely due to a metabolic issue, and maybe also an indulging issue. But I don't feel like it's fair to compare my satisfaction from eating with the strong chemical pull of addiction some feel. I like food, I have a sluggish metabolism, and i think as you become more overweight the efforts seem futile, exercise seems overwhelming, and maybe it just feels too hard to do (understandably so) but I still don't think that rose to the level of "addiction" at least for me. I also wonder how something so necessary to life--air, water, food--can be an addiction?

I'd be curious to see our group's thinking on this subject. Do you prefer obesity being treated as an addiction? For everyone? You individually?

Interesting thoughts BB. I suspect younger people don't do as much with professional organizations because of time. With kids and two working parents how can you possibly go to many bar association dinners and mixers. As a single person I did some of this but after getting married, changing jobs and having a longer commute I just found I had no time. It is too bad.

I am one who thinks food is addictive or at least some food. I just came home from a health food store - big as any other grocery around here, and really all I need is to get things from dairy, meat and produce dept. Everything else is snack foods, juices, crackers, cereal plus health remedies. Maybe not all foods are addictive but the right combination of sugar/fat/salt/crunch sure is. I could not break this cycle of junk eating on my own, needed the drastic but excellent intervention of VSG.

Now, back to blowing my nose. Diane S

I do not believe all weight issues are addiction driven. I do believe that mine have become addiction driven.

My obesity did not start out as addiction driven, but over time sugar has become a substance of addiction for me. However, sugar fat combinations are really the bomb. I can eat a peppermint drop or a butterscotch disc and be okay. Give me a Reese's PB cup and I'm suddenly jonesing for the next one. Then I want more and more and more. The fat sugar combination can really trigger a binge like cycle for me. I can't break that cycle without turmoil until I "sleep it off". After a good night's sleep I have reset, my blood sugar levels are back to normal and as long as I don't ingest the fat sugar combo, I remain in control. Eat the fat sugar combination and off I go again. That is a food addiction in my personal journal.

I don't know if I would call boredom eating an addiction, or stress eating for that matter. Yet, I don't believe relying on food to support emotional life (positive or negative) is in the long run healthy for weight maintenance.

Some people do have sluggish metabolisms - that has been proven. It has also been shown in numerous studies that a faulty metabolism that is caused by genetics is extremely rare. I believe the number is something like one in every 10,000 or 100,00 people. Most people, studies have shown, have "learned" metabolisms that can altered to a large measure. However, once people hit obesity and depending upon how long they are obese, the metabolism can be changed significantly because obesity is a metabolic disease. Once obesity takes hold it is much harder to fix the metabolism, but it can be done through diet and exercise - lots and lots of exercise.

I think it is important to acknowledge how much conflicting information there has been over the past 40+ years on diet and health. At times it is hard to know what to believe. I used to believe that eating a baked potato - as long as I did not use butter - was the way to go. Remember Susan Powter - she was the anti fat queen. Eat all the carbs you want was her Tennent. Carbs weren't bad! Fat was bad! Now I know differently because the science has refuted this tidbit of false truth.

I believe that obesity and weight health is a multi-faceted issue. I think a great number of people who are more than mildly overweight use food for emotional purposes. 5 years ago, I would have denied that my eating was emotionally driven. Now, I will stand on my bully pulpit and tell you just how significantly emotionally driven my eating is. Most days hunger plays only a minor role in my actual reason for eating. I'd say that at least 70-80% of the time I eat for emotional reasons.

I go could go on and on and on AND ON about this topic. It is fascinating to me and a huge part of my persona journey.

I think sometimes it's hard to imagine that we don't all share the same behaviors when we share the same results. I know that I made super poor choices to gain my weight - eating mass quantities of food. But never in front of others. My eating was a secret. So when other people who are obese say they don't eat poorly or too much, I have a hard time believing it because I see their obesity through my lenses.

Given that it's so easy for most people to gain weight, I don't think everyone is addicted to food. But I do think crappy food makes people crave more crappy food. And most people don't crave healthy food like chicken breast and veggies the same way they might crave desserts or potato chips. And some people like me have some deeply engrained coping mechanisms that revolve around food. Is that addiction? Maybe not the same way that heroin is addictive, but it's a strong reflexive response nevertheless.

You two make some very good points, specifically that all food is not created equal. I know the way broccoli spikes my blood sugar is different from the way donuts do. I also know that my emotional response to broccoli is very different from, say, mama's pork chops.

Peps interesting point about genetic metabolic issues. I guess I do feel like I've had somewhat of a "which came first" issue of my own. Maybe I didn't start out so disadvantaged but being obese usually means dealing with one issue after another. After having had VSG I do feel like that significantly altered my metabolism. And, fwiw, I feel like being pregnant makes my metabolism stronger--more so than just the usual eat some more calories because you're growing a baby. I also tend to think the way my body reacts to food is altered in a pregnant state because I seem to lose my lactose intolerance in this stage and do much much better eating sugar than when I'm not.

I guess ultimately I don't think food or obesity issues can be simplified. I do totally agree different foods cause different reactions for different people. As a general rule I agree that the more processed the foods, the more 'chemical" they are and to me it makes sense that they're more addictive. And I guess the cynic in me thinks that's more cash in the pockets of the people producing them!!

Really intriguing point about emotional use of food. I think almost everyone does this, so I don't think it's a per se bad thing. There is a lot of joy in eating. And you all have helped me identify that I, too, have an emotional component to food. Interestingly, not being able to physically consume as much has helped me break this chain. It's much harder for me to feel that I "need" to eat something out of a purely emotional need now. It's rarer for me to be "guilted" into eating because I physically cannot sometimes. But I hadn't really associated this emotional component of food with addiction. Hmmm more pondering necessary.

And of course there is also a social component to food--which you could also find parallels to social drinking or smoking etc. I'm sure.

I too find it fascinating. I'm fairly convinced that we've just proved this is a very complex issue. Sometimes I wonder if the "lady doth protest too much" and I simply don't want to be addicted to food. Or rather have been addicted. But idk. I really am curious about others' experiences, the stigma of addiction, or that now maybe does it provide more protection? I mean, in other words, would people be more understanding of obesity if it were addiction related or less? Not that that makes it so or doesn't make it so, but I guess I feel that people will always think that obesity comes from some terrible character flaw :(

FWIW, I don't think of myself as "addicted" to food either. Rather, I do identify my eating behaviors that resemble addictive behavior were the eating instead drinking of booze or taking of illicit drugs or the smoking of cigarettes. I have developed a comfort in using the phrase "My eating is disordered". There is truth in the words and for me it is an accurate statement.