slipstream becomings

i am really fat.

sometimes this bothers me. a lot. 

i am not as fat as i was a few weeks ago.

sometimes it bothers me to constantly think of myself as fat.

i am moving slowly and persistently towards healthier, leaner, more efficient body.

sometimes the pace of the journey is disheartening.

yoga is a practice,a lifelong one if you’re smart.

sometimes the way my fat gets in the way of my bending and holding and even my breathing compels me to give up.

but then i tell myself that if i give up, it won’t change.

sometimes i think it would be easier not to change.

today is saturday. i am alone, and have plans to attend a party this evening.

sometimes i wish i was a paper doll and could change everything about myself by folding over a few tabs.

i got a haircut and some new clothes and i look much better than i have in a long time.

sometimes i really really do feel a lot better.

the car and i were flooded outo n western road today.

i don’t know what’s wrong with it, and i am over course totally stressed and utterly convinced that i have managed to crack the engine block through impatience while sitting in a small roadside lake.

but you know what?

to calm down i did a yoga session from the dvd followed by a relaxation meditation from doyogawithme.com

and it worked. i calmed down quite a bit.

i’m still almost sick with stress, but….but.

and i’m not journalling my food. i’m loosely counting points,and not freaking out or bingeing or jumping ship entirely. i just lost the compulsion to journal. (becuase i went over last week and didn’t want to see it in ink. that’s the truth of it.) i don’t know what happned. or rather, i know exactly what happened. i was a little bit successful. and then the demon of self-sabotage kicked in and a life of not really believing i have the right to be successful kicked in and this is the sound of my sliding into the comfortable nowhere zone of mediocrity. that and for all my conscious believe in the need for balance, my internal perfectionist jumped ship. fuck her. she has well and truly entered the long slow process of losing her job. 

listen up for the roaring sound of me kicking the demon’s ass and escorting the inner perfectionist from the building of my soul. (i could start the journal tomorrow. okay. i’ll start the journal tomorrow.)

the last four days i deviated from the ww points allocations. and it’s okay. it’s life. 

i did it mindfully. i was reasonable. but when i set out to do this this time it was going to be for life. and this is life. and increasingly the importance of numbers slides away as it gets easier to ride my bike and i want to go farther, as i get more efficient in the water and want to go faster, as my couch-to-5k start date approaches and i get excited about running again.

so we go. one foot in front of the other, with yesterday’s celebratory dinners delicious memories and tomorrow’s workout something to look forward to.

this is me, finding peace with the process, finding peace with myself.

namaste.

i inserted the earphones dry, with the extra small caps on them and they more or less stayed in! it made a world of differenc eto my workout to have tunes to push me through the tough bits.

so i think i’ll keep the gizmo after all.

i also think this cold has finally relented. i did flip turns today (and crappitycrapcrap the bulkheads ae fixed and we’re swimming short course) but i didn’t cough or snot TOO much. a little. and i’m still stuffy in the morning, but i figure it’s on it’s way out. what a bastard rotovirus that was!

i’ve been a little more lax with the sugar treats and am now suffering craves for terribly good but awfully bad yummy things. so i guess i need to step right back. i’m not ready for moderation if it’s going to spark those kinds of physical cravings. they are icky.

i got the doctor to weight me today. 233. so i probably didn’t weigh in properly. now i know. and it’s fine. 

we also talked about meds and stuff. i told her i am actually feeling 100000x better. she said it makes perfect sense that 5 weeks in i would be experiencing the benefits of exercise. she recommends vitamin d and a grow light when the hours of daylight start to fade. amazing. and PHEW.

really.

this road is long. i’m travelling on it.

and i’m almost done shelley. no really. i am.

i think i’ve hit a bit of a stride.

food planning is a little easier. exercise is something i really look forward to, and it lends much needed regularity to my day. i think my brain is producing more seratonin, and i no longer feel utterly, blackly miserable.

writing goes along. the girl and i are getting along famously.

i need to go to bed early. really early. everyday. when i don’t everything falls apart a bit.

i’ve forgiven myself the dirty house, but i still need to clean.

the headphone for swimming didn’t fit and i couldn’t et an accurate scale reading, but i knowi’m doing it all right right now.

gratitude. i have lots.

it’s okay. everything’s working out.

i am sorry not to have posted so much this week. the writing for school is coming along a bit more easily, so my days at school have been productive (not that blog writing isn’t productive, but i have had terrible writer’s block for more than a year and i am very far behind my cohort and need to work my ass off if i am going to finish this degree).

i feel good. i don’t know why investigating medicine would have changed anything but this week has been the best in the last 20 months BY FAR. 

i got to bed earlier. i added a multi-vitamin. maybe the changes in diet and exercise finally just kicked in, aided by the vitamin? i have no idea, but i’ll take it. and i will be continue to think about meds, because it’s hard to believe it’s just over you know?

i stopped talking to my mother with nay regularity last summer when life went completely pear shaped. family drama, and not worth repeating but to say it drove me into therapy and a lot of really really dark places. i talked to her this week and told her the bike trailer had been stolen. she proceeded to tell me about a time in her life when a lot of things were stolen from her. it’s always the same with her; i can’t have any kind of experience - positive, negative, professional, personal - that she hasn’t had. it’s awful.

there have been innumerable things in my relationship with her that i think about and promise to my girl i won’t repeat. not ever. every day.

steel cut oats, raisins and a nice long walk. 

yes.

enjoy the day!

allo, and sorry to have dumped and run like that. i have been trying to get to bed at around 10 to get the girl to school on time and it really cuts into my down time. she’s just 4, but she goes to the waldorf school full time. they have been amazing about my being late for almost 2 years, but she has started to express soe negative stuff about it, so i HAVE to change it. it’s ridiculous, this morning problem i have….but i’ll fix it. somehow.

i talked to two doctors and my analyst about drugs. i got some very good answers, and some excellent offers of support. my analyst tends to think that i don’t really fit the classical descriptions/categories for a diagnosis of depression (so much for self-diagnosis!) but he also feels that the drugs might help, and anything that helps me get through this is worth investigating.

do youwant to know something?

i have felt good for three days in a row. it was like monday was some kind of bottom i bounced off. i’m going to give diet and exercise a couple more weeks, but i am also going to follow up with the doctor next week.

on the food and exercise front: everything seems to be going really well. i am not having nearly as much trouble managing the ww planning and point stuff. the sugar cravings have really receded and i am loving the sense of control i have. i haven’t laid out menus like i did in the first two weeks, but rather made a list of foods i would like to eat this week and shopped for them. but for a couple of minor pit fall s(goddam popcorn) things seem to be moving along. i can see in the future as my daily point allowance goes down having to go back to daily, specific menus, but i also think that’s part of managing. ill plan tightly until i get a sense of what it’s like to eat that many points and ten i can go back to swapping. i hope.

on the exercise front: the weights during weight sessions moved up a little this week. this cold is lingering with a yucky cough, but i pushed through the whole 2600m swim workout yesterday. my bike and i are slowly becoming better friends and i’m looking forward to starting the couch to 5k in june.

thank you so so so much for your kind words. i’ll keep posting and reading and being grateful. you guys keep being you.

i am miserable. profoundly. this has been going on for so long i am barely able to remember when i didn’t feel like this, though i know it all started when i decided to sell my house. even typing that makes me start to cry.

i have almost all the classic symptoms of clinical depression. i also have been experiencing terrible anxiety, paranoia, self-loathing and the most unimaginable mood swings.

i have, on both sides of my family, a history of thyroid issues and other psychiatric/depressive issues, mostly untreated (both the thyroid and the pysch stuff).

in the last four weeks, i have added at least an hour of exercise every day. i have eliminated a huge portion of the refined sugars from my diet, including white flour. the other whites (rice and pasta) were not such a big deal. i have always eaten a tonne of fresh vegetables and fruits, but in the last four weeks i have also cut out a goodly amount of red meat and pork from my diet.

i have been working with a psychoanalyst 2-3 times a week since last august. it;s brutal and hard and i’m not at all sure it’s helping. in fact a good chunk of the time i think it’s making me feel much much worse.

i am sleeping much more regularly, though not as regularly as i might like.

i have not smoked any cigarettes in 40 days.

and last week, for the first time in almost 20 months, i got some writing done.

so my question is, when does one decide it’s time to investigate anti-depressant or anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals? 

i have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to request a full thyroid function screen. i bought multi-vitamins today and i am really really trying to make sure i don’t let myself get dehydrated.

how much of this can i reasonably chalk up to the circumstances of my life, and how much of it to changing things like diet? 

how much of it just might suggest a chemical imbalance that needs attention?

sometimes, like last night before i could fall asleep when i actually thought about the consequences of suicide, and this morning when i could not control my crying and my utter despair, i am really really scared.

but then it recedes and i start to feel okay again. 

and for whatever reason, i am deathly, terribly afraid of the drugs they use to treat depression.

i am more terrified of being a terrible parent and a terrible failure at life because i refused to help myself.

this cold is on it’s way out, but it’s still haunting me.

and i am fighting a rather terrible battle with depression, almost scaring myself a lot of the time.

so i’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and get a thyroid screen and some other tests, as many as i can, and then we’ll see. if i don’t start feeling better soon i’m going to have to get some pharmaceutical help i think. we’re going on almost two years, and it has to be over. soon.

i cut 300m out of my workout today, partly because of time and partly because i just feel like shit. no flip turns, and i couldn’t find a rhythm. and i was coughing during rest and the pool was crowded and i was late….i still swam for an hour, logging 2200m, but it wasn’t quite a victory.

on the good side of self- care today i got some summer clothes and some very badly needed new bras.

tomorrow will be a better day. it has to be.

i need a rest. i have been going full bore for three weeks, and my body told me today in the pool to take tomorrow OFF. i called the workout in about 400 meters early, and still had a 2 hour nap this afternoon. i was not only tired today, but also muscle sore. yesterday was weight day, and i added a new exercise, so it’s probable that i’m really in need of a real break.

so i will rest and honour my body. tomorrow i will probably do a nice long hatha session and just stretch it all out.

i am still quite congested and this cough isn’t going away. if i wake up tomorrow with the same symptoms i am going to have to go to the doctor i think. it’s been an entire week, and i really don’t feel good. 

my weight is down 2 whole lovely inspiring pounds. i am starting to understand how people develop unhealthy relationships with their scales. while i was swimming, i was trying to convince myself i couldn’t possibly take tomorrow off because it was weigh-in day, as if that were some kind of immovable event.

and i’m kind of bummed. i had to move due to unforeseeable circumstances in december last year. i had no choice but to leave a large numbers of plants that i had brought from my house to this new rental situation.  the new tenants at the old house were not friendly about my coming to get them, and i noticed today that they have put in a vegetable garden where a number of my perennials were. i know i have no right to those plants and i know it was kind of silly to even take them from the magnificent gardens i had planted at my old house, but it still makes me very sad to let them go. 

i have lost so very very very much in the last two years. i will find and build it all again, but for today my heart is very sore.