[Esofia]

Hello everyone, nice to see you again! Well, less nice to have put some of the weight back on, but hey, it happens. You were all very helpful when I was losing weight before, so it'll be nice to have support again. I've got much less weight to lose than last time, thankfully. Some of it is due to creeping up over time, and some of it is because I got together with my lovely partner R in summer 2013, and unlike my rather miserable ex D, he actually loves cooking. Only he has different eating patterns to me, I'm a breakfaster while he's a snacker, and since I'm small and inactive (still have severe ME/CFS) and he is 5'7 and cycles or walks to work. So if you combine that we end up eating more!

The current plan is to have smaller breakfasts and lunches, and to have those separately from him. I'm vegan, incidentally, and have always had a healthy diet, though portion control and snacking can be problems. Last time I lose 1lb/week on 1050 calories a day, which is unthinkably low for most people, but I'm small and really inactive (largely bedbound) and was fine on it. Surprisingly energetic, in fact. This time I am going to aim for more in the region of 1200, and have 1000 as the cut-off for the minimum. My health's not been great this winter, I could probably do with the extra calories. I'll see how it balances out once I've been calorie counting for a while. I tried doing it without an app for a bit, but haven't lost any weight, so evidently I do need to do proper calorie counting again.

I have a bread machine and make my own sourdough, so I have a slice of that for breakfast. I haven't worked out the calories on that yet, perhaps I should weigh it? I was doing a slice of bread with soup for lunch, but I'm pretty bored with that, and am switching to Innocent Veg Pots for the time being. I can afford them, thankfully. Hopefully this means we can eat supper together in a fairly normal way. The last couple of times we had friends over for board games I made biscuits (cookies in American? small cookies?), which worked out to two and a half biscuits per person. I think that's fine as a weekly or fortnightly thing, and I'll save making the famed chocolate beetroot cupcakes for summer picnics when we're feeding a crowd. More usual snacks for me are tiny bits of dark chocolate, the odd piece of fruit, sometimes a nut or seed bar (especially if I'm out and need emergency food).

We get a fruit and veg box, though between us we've been too ill or busy to use it much lately, and one thing we do have to be careful about is balancing Vitamin K intake, as R is on blood thinners. If anyone happens to have experience of that, we could do with some advice. The other night he had kale (REALLY high in Vit K) after no green veg for a week, plus a bottle of beer, and got a really nasty migraine the day after.

One thing I've noticed is that I lost a lot of weight from my backside and hips last time, and generally have been gaining in my stomach over the years. I've always been busty. We do tend to be apple shapes in my family. If you go by waist-hip ratio, I only just got out of the "dangerously high" zone when I was 7 1/2 stone last time, as I recall. I looked up central weight gain on Wikipedia, and it mentioned high cortisol as a possible cause. I reckon that may be a problem for me. Cortisol has been flagged up as an issue in ME patients in several studies, and it fits a lot of my other symptoms, such as severe nightmares, cold extremities and such. I've just started taking a herbal supplement for adrenal balance, Gaia Adrenal Support, so we'll see if that helps.

I'm happy in my self, which always helps, and I think I have a pretty nice life. I have an awesome partner, great friends, an adorable kittycat, and lovely hobbies. I like the way I look, I just want to be back to my slimmer weight and definitely want to stop gaining. R thinks I look totally beautiful and sexy no matter what my weight, which definitely helps. We have just discovered that I rock waistcoats! Though they seemed to be sized two or three sizes smaller than everything else. Also I have some lovely dresses on the way from Bravissimo.

I get out a lot more with R than I did with my ex, he's very keen on getting me out with the wheelchair, which means pub visits and such are possible now. Also we take our cat for gentle walks on her little harness and lead when I'm up to it. I've had a bad winter, health-wise, and the days are short in Scottish winters, plus Herself has a low opinion of rain and wind, so we've not been walking her much at all lately, but we were doing it regularly last year, and I hope to get back to that. Any exercise I manage is far too little to affect my weight, of course, so I'm not factoring it in.

Another thing is that while I know that support is really useful for keeping me on track with a diet, I need to be careful with support forums in general. I tend to be overly empathetic, which means that I pick up stress from other people and can get quite distressed reading the more emotional forum threads. Also I'm at home all day and don't have the wildest social life, so I can get very drawn into forums. At least I'm more aware of it, and know not to get into domestic abuse threads at all, for instance, plus R helps me keep perspective on when it's time to step away. Are there any subforums which might be better for staying away from the high-stress conversations? I'm in the Featherweight category, for instance, as I'm only bordering on overweight (well, by my weight, my waist measurement is another matter).