Thursday, September 29, 2022

Ian is still causing a lot of wind and some rain here. It is actually more windy now at 8:30 am than at any time yesterday. We are lucky that we retained power all night though about 1/3 of the population in our town is out of power.

Yes, my former Florida home was in Port Charlotte and I have friends with homes from Naples up to Clearwater. A close friend's sister and husband have a home in Port Charlotte near the harbor on a canal. They chose not to evacuate yesterday (not smart or fair to first-responders IMO). As of last night no one had heard from them because cell towers are down. The president of the HOA in my former development was able to put a post on Facebook this morning saying that there is no power in the park and the roads are flooded and filled with trees. The pictures you may have seen on the News in ***** Gorda and Venice were on streets that we drove through and places we walked on a regular basis. My friend who had the heart attack last summer and barely survived has a mobile home in Venice. They aren't there for the winter yet but as of last night they had heard that at least 10 of the homes had lost roofs and several had lost lanais. Many of our favorite places on that coast are going to be destroyed. Mike used to rent a home for Thanksgiving week on Captiva Island - who knows what survived in Sanibel and Captive. Just devastating. I probably had mentioned that I spent the summer of 2004 in Miami when multiple hurricane**** Florida including Charley and Frances. Though it was very scary to have to evacuate more than once it didn't have the shock of this one. I imagine that is because I didn't have friends living in the area at that time nor was I familiar with the places affected.

Yesterday was a day of watching the news and movies and trying to find dry spells during which to take Justice out. It looks like at least half the day today will be essentially the same. As long as we have power I have no complaints. Being in Florida mugginess without power would be miserable.

Have a thirsty Thursday!

Hard to "like" this post, but I did want to acknowledge it! Some of the footage of Port Charlotte looks downright catastrophic. I'm glad that you aren't there experiencing it first hand. Hopefully, Ian will pass over and move on up the seaboard today and the west coast of Florida can start clean up and repair.

Not sure what is going on with me, my weight and eating.... I am having a lot of trouble sleeping through the night. Fell asleep after 12:40 am last night and was awake A LOT on and off during the night. I'm not at all wanting to get out of bed at 6:30. I want to turn off the alarm, roll over and get more sleep. I wonder how much impact the lack of decent sleep/rest is having on my weight and effort to eat well. Hmmmm.....

Anyway, yesterday I was giving some thought to a little medication help to help with the weight loss, too. I am not sure what is making the struggle so hard - except of course, the eating disorder/psychological dysfunction likes being in the driver's seat. I also think the physical tiredness might be negatively impacting my mental/emotional vigor. Ah, what a tangled web.....

Today I will end with Found's slogan: "Obesity is not a decision. Obesity is a disease."

Sigh....

We all seem to be in the same ongoing struggle with obesity. As has been said more than once it does get exhausting.

Still not getting a lot of news from the west coast of Florida because cell service is out. However there has been some information from my old neighborhood where damage is mostly minor but trees are down and there is no power. There are still several friends not accounted for (in other areas without cell service).

Liz, I hope you hear from your friends soon. I suppose there are many reasons people don't evacuate, including can't afford to, or no place to go,. But being one who takes cover when the tornado siren goes off instead of running out in the street to look, you wouldn't have to ask me twice to leave.

DH and I are watching a show about Katrina on Apple TV, I can't remember the official name, something about 5 days at Memorial Hospital... It is searing. Hopefully we don't ever bungle rescue efforts like that again. So terribly inhumane.

Today I met with one of our nutritionists at my WLS clinic. This time I was not irritated when I was done. She said that yes, my weight loss was going to be slow, but not to go below 1,000 calories. I found it helpful to review the vitamin requirements again. I also appreciated her pointing out I had kept off a significant amount of weight for over 10 years.I was surprised how much I liked hearing that. Inside me is still the girl who wants the teacher to say you did a good job on this assignment.

Peps it's so hard to know how to address these food issues sometimes. Where I feel I'm a lot of chemistry, there is also disordered thinking around food. But if I can calm down the hormone/brain part, I can deal with the psychological part better. While you have identified disordered thinking about food as a major cause of your struggles, that doesn't mean that there isn't also some hormones and/or wiring playing a role, just not the primary role. If you want to try something pharmaceutical, it's not denying your hard earned awareness of your food issues. But maybe it's allowing yourself to fight a war on only one front for awhile, instead of two fronts. And maybe the difference from before is you're not saying, this will fix me, but rather, this will give me some help so I can keep moving forward on fixing my issues...

The flip side I suppose, is if it doesn't help in any way, then how demoralized do we get? Arghh, another failure! I don't want to be feeling that either. I am trying very hard to approach this medication pragmatically. So far, I am in a good place. My take on this, if it doesn't work, I didn't fail, its not the right intervention for me.

Ps: I'm sleeping like a zombie once I get past the initial dosage adjustment...

I like the idea of easing one front to make it easier to deal with another. But boy have I felt the effects of failure - not good mentally or physically.