Random Thoughts

Yes, I've been away. Between work and my toddler, I don't get much blogging done! (Or really any computing.)

I have had some posts percolating for some time, but at this time they seem to be just little thought bubbles, so that's all I've got.

-I secretly want to be a mommy blogger. I follow a ton of crafty-mommy blogs, and I don't know how they do it (or if they even do it, or if they are faking!) but I am amazed. Maybe they really have secret helpers or elves that do the magic behind the blogging curtain. I'd love to spend my days hanging out with my girl and making fun stuff. And decorating my house, and doing all this crazy DIY stuff. But, yeah. I'm doing pretty well just to read their blogs from time to time.

-I read an article recently on CNN that was titled something like "Horrible guests, vegetarians, and other Thanksgiving nightmares". I think the title wasn't quite that nasty, but that was the idea I took away from it. I'm an omnivore nowadays, but I spent over 20 Thanksgivings as a vegetarian. Why is a vegetarian at Thanksgiving dinner such a nightmare? For every snooty, finicky, self-righteous vegetarian, there are at least 20 who want nothing more than to enjoy your company and a nice meal, and who will do anything to avoid you stressing out over feeding them. It's not that big a deal, really. Thanksgiving dinner to me has always been more about the sides than the bird anyway.

-The difference, for me, between now and when I was losing weight is not what I'm eating or even my level of restriction, it's running. I was running at least 10 miles a week when I was losing weight. Now, well, running has been sporadic at best. It's very hard to find time to run on top of everything else. I've experimented with getting up earlier on days I work (like 4:45) to get in a run, and that has worked best, but this week it wasn't really possible between working and staying up late cooking for Thanksgiving. Next week, though, I hope to get back at it. At least I'm not gaining. I am hoping to lose 5 lbs by the end of the year. Not gaining would be a minor victory.

That is all for now. Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

Frustration

Well, I'm super frustrated with weight loss. I have been gaining and losing the same 5 lbs for months now. In fact, I've been at this weight for nearly a year and it's making me crazy. I've tracked my calories, and I'm paying attention to urges for mindless eating. I'm NOT getting regular exercise, because I still haven't figured out how to fit it into my schedule, but I am working on it (looking at biking to work, and I'll be going to shorter shifts soon so I'll have a bit more time on work days). But I think exercise is a fairly small part of the problem. My stress is probably a big part of it.

One of the big stressors is the house hunt. In June, we signed a 1-year renewal on our lease of the house we are in. In August, our landlord announced he was selling the house. A few weeks later, we got the foreclosure notice from his bank's attorney. Needless to say, this threw us into a tailspin. We had wanted to buy a house, but were planning on a year from now. We just spent all of our money on treatment, and we have huge amounts of debt. But, when we looked at the situation, we realized that going to another rental is likely to end up the same way, since so many houses for rent right now (especially the nicer ones) are first homes of people who bought something else and couldn't sell their first place, and many of these end up in foreclosure.

There actually turns out to be a lot of upside to our situation. We consulted a couple attorneys (our landlord is an attorney, so we wanted to be sure of our position) and found that current federal law protects us because of the foreclosure. In fact, in many ways we seem to have more rights than the owners. Once foreclosure proceedings began, our lease became protected even if the house is sold or auctioned. Also, we were able to use our deposit--all of it--towards rent, because in either a sale or auction there is nothing compelling the original owner to return our deposit for any reason. Many people have told us we can "squat" here, not paying rent at all now, but that isn't true unless we don't care if we are evicted. And we do care, because we are using this time to look for and purchase a home, and we want to have this place to live in until we close on a house.

So, it's good--we are buying a house!--and we will end up paying less for the mortgage than we do in rent, but it's quite stressful nonetheless. We might buy the house we are in, since we love the location so much, but that is not a certainty by any means.

We are accustomed to having a lot of stress in our lives, and we are trying to learn how to cultivate serenity instead of chaos. I am hopeful that this process has a side effect of helping me to change whatever behavior is keeping me from losing this weight.

A couple weeks ago, our Lucy turned 1--I can't believe it. We had her first birthday party, and it was much bigger than we had intended, and it was exhausting for all of us, but fun. It was a pretty traditional party--kids, presents, cake, chaos--but we decorated with Indian elephants, to celebrate her heritage. She had fun, although she was frequently overwhelmed by everything happening around her. We dressed her in the cutest baby sari that I found online. Super adorable. When I get the pics off the camera, I'll post some.

Summer Pics

Two-Legged Life Again

I am out of my boot, my xrays show good healing bone, and the sprain is mostly healed. My ankle still gets a bit sore, but I went back to work this week and it went fine. It's kind of good, actually, after almost 8 weeks at home, to be back at work, although I've enjoyed the summer spent with Lucy and the past few weeks with hubby as well. I was afraid of losing my skills at work, so it's good to get back to it.

Being laid up for a couple months, or at least having less than usual activity, isn't great for weight loss. But I think I am getting to understand my emotional triggers for eating a lot better now. There is a lot of talk in the WLS community about "emotional eating" and that basically seems to refer to eating for any reason other than actual physical hunger. This, I have found, is a vast generalization, to the point of becoming meaningless. Emotional eating? Most eating is associated with emotions. The advice given is that one should start therapy and get a handle on their "emotional eating" before going through with WLS.

This is well-intended advice, but again, I think it is a bit meaningless. What I am learning about myself is that I have a lot of underlying anxiety. My daily life, in fact, is filled with a lot more anxiety than I have ever been conscious of before. I don't notice my anxiety because, A, I am so used to it and have lived with it for so very long, and B, I self-medicate before I notice that I was anxious. Frequently the self-medication is food, but not always. I also read, shop, or sew or do other crafts. None of those things is bad in itself, but they do help me continue to ignore the anxiety that led me to those activities in the first place.

I'm hoping that as I start to notice myself suddenly get "hungry" (which is actually "appetite", an emotional trigger, rather than "hunger" which is physical, and comes on gradually) and realize that it is often because I am experiencing some anxiety over something, that this triggered eating will diminish. My weight loss has halted again, and I suppose I should also determine if I need another fill. I don't think I really do, I think that I do more eating when I'm not hungry than I realize. So, I am more focused right now on improving this area of life.

I'm pretty frustrated by this weight loss thing, to be honest. I am still 20 pounds above pre-pregnancy weight. I would like to have another baby, and I don't have much time to do it, but I can't fathom getting pregnant at this weight for a starting point. It's depressing. Getting back to the gym should help a little, though. And we are doing pretty well about following the goals I listed in my last post--preparing meals at home, eating at the table, eating lots of fruits and veggies. Lucy is doing much better with her solids and pretty much eats what we do.

I'm not saying much about hubby's progress because it's not my place to do so here, except to comment that he is doing much, much better and we are feeling much more hopeful for our future. I'm very happy to have him home and on a better path.

"Normal" Eating?

I was raised by an anorexic/bulimic. This isn't a secret, and if my mother read this, she would agree. Her mother was also an anorexic, and felt she was overweight at 90 lbs. My mother knew the ins and outs of her eating disorders before I was even born. It was so not a secret, in fact, that she explicitly inducted me into the club as a pre-teen (or as they are called now, "tween"). She taught me, in clear language, that "this is what women do": diet to be thin, purge if necessary. I don't think this would have come to me naturally without coaching; I was and am much more prone to simple overeating. But this was my instruction, and I followed instruction until I realized that it was making me sick and miserable. This was around age 16.

Now I am raising my own daughter. She is only 9 months old, but I realize that she is already learning how to eat from me. She has been slow to take to solids, and it became clear early on that she was mostly interested in things she could hold herself, and things that her dad and I were eating. No baby food or purees for her. She wants real stuff. She often isn't interested in food at all, anything I offer her, so we skip a lot of "meals" since she is getting her nutrition from formula still. At least once a day I put her in her high chair and eat a meal with her, but it's rarely 3 times a day.

This isn't just her, though. I don't really eat "meals" when left to my own devices. Since I was banded, it seems like so much trouble to go through to prepare a meal for just myself when I'm only going to eat a cup or so of food. It's a lot easier to pick something out of the fridge that will keep me satisfied for the next several hours. And lately, those choices have not been particularly band-wise.

I realize this isn't normal. And while in a lot of ways it makes sense for me, my daughter is not banded. If she is lucky, and has good, healthy instruction in childhood, she will never need to consider something like that. But how do I teach her normal attitudes about food? How can I teach her how to choose a normal, healthy meal when I don't really know what that is myself?

My mother cooked meals for us, don't get me wrong. There were plenty of nights we ate out, or ate TV dinners, but usually she cooked dinner, we almost always had a packed lunch, and sometimes on weekends she would make breakfast. She is a good cook. And I give her a lot of credit for feeding us healthy foods and not letting us become picky eaters. We always had a good variety of foods, and when I ate with friends, I was always the least picky eater of the bunch.

I don't know why I have this aversion to preparing meals on a regular basis. I do, but I don't understand it. But I'd like to overcome it and teach Lucy healthy attitudes about eating. I think it is probably "normal" to have parents who cook or prepare most of your meals, to usually eat at least one meal together, and to eat sitting down, slowly. Not scarfing down something over the sink (I do that regrettably often). It's "normal" (I think) to learn when you are full and not be forced or cajoled into eating more than that amount. It's "normal" to mostly eat freshly prepared food (that is, not packaged/store bought/restaurant food) and to have sweets only "occasionally" rather than with every meal or every snack. Am I right? Am I missing anything here?

I don't eat normally. My husband doesn't either; we both are in the habit of grabbing something when we are hungry. He is better about it being something healthy than I am. He is more of a cook than I am, especially an everyday cook. But maybe I could make some sort of list of eating goals, and work toward them slowly, with a goal of modeling more "normal" eating than I had modeled for me? (Because, despite all those home-cooked healthy meals, the majority of the eating that took place in our house was anything but normal.)

Goals:

1. Cook dinner at home most nights.

2. Eat a variety of vegetables and proteins

3. Have fruit instead of sweets

4. Prepare healthy breakfasts at home (this I'm reasonably good at, especially hot cereals)

5. Eat slowly, at the table

Those seem like pretty normal goals. Any other bandster parents have comments to add? I have an opportunity to break or diminish the cycle, as my daughter is still a baby. I don't want to screw it up.

A Sedentary Life

Lucy and her nanny are off to the zoo today. Summer arrived in Portland a couple of days ago (in time for the 4th--a rarity in the Pacific NW) and I have mostly stayed inside, not only because of my gimpy leg, but I also got the yucky cold going around. I woke up last night around 3am unable to stop coughing, and had to find some cough suppressant to get through the rest of the night. Today my head hurts every time I cough.

Lucy has a bit of a stuffy nose, but so far that seems to be it.

Things are going okay. I am waiting to hear the outcome of my short term disability claim. I don't think it will be denied, but I haven't really checked to see if I really have an 8 day waiting period (instead of longer). I guess I have too many other things going on.

I haven't been weighing myself in the past week. I'm afraid what a week of inactivity will reveal on the scale. It can't be good.

Hubby is doing pretty well. He will probably come home around the 23rd of July, after 45 days of treatment. He sounds really good on the phone.

I guess I'm off to read, knit, or sleep.

Today's Gift

I get the "Today's Gift" daily meditation emails from Hazelden. I usually ignore them, honestly--most of them are too churchy for me. But sometimes one is really helpful, like this one, which seemed quite timely in light of both physical and emotional injuries that are in need of healing.

Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. When animals in the forest are wounded they find a place to lie down and rest completely for many days . . . They just rest and get the healing they need.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

We hurt. We suffer. We wrong our loved ones and they do wrong by us. Reaching desperately for an answer will not help us. Pretending we're not hurt doesn't help either. When we are wounded, the wound needs rest in order to heal. So it is with our souls. If we poke at our hurt, pick at the sore, rub it in the dirt of others' opinions, we do not allow it time to heal.

If you've been hurt, accept that. Feel the hurt. Be aware of it. Let it heal. Maybe it would be better if you didn't talk to that person for a while. Maybe you need to let go of the relationship. Maybe you just need some quiet time. Whatever the answer is, find a safe place and allow yourself to heal.

If you're feeling pain, be aware of it. Feel the pain, and then quit picking at the wound. Lie low. Quit fighting. Relax. Give your wounds time and enough rest to heal.

No, Seriously...

We have been on our own for about 2 1/2 weeks now. Hubby is doing well in treatment. I talk to him daily, and he seems to be really getting into the program and practicing lots of new healthy behaviors. He sounds very healthy and honest.

On Sunday, I was getting ready to take Lucy for a walk outside. It was a gorgeous day, maybe 80 degrees, no clouds. I got her ready upstairs, put on shoes that I thought would both be comfortable to walk in and go well with my cute skirt. I then proceeded to slip on the second step and fall down the next 5.

Lucy was scared, and cried for a minute, but she was fine. I was initially writhing in pain and nauseated. At first I thought, "For sure, I've broken my ankle." Then I reconsidered: often, people think their ankle is broken and it's just a bad sprain. After about 10 more minutes though, I knew whichever it was, I had to go the ER.

Luckily I had my phone with me. I got ahold of a friend to take me to the ER, and my neighbor to watch Lucy while we were there. They got me through very quickly (I went to my own hospital) and in fact, I did have 2 fractures on my fibula (the thinner bone of the lower leg). The good news is that it does not need surgery. The bad news: 6 weeks of no weight-bearing.

If you are wondering how I am going to take care of Lucy with one leg, you're on the right track. Also, our house is 3 stories. There's no bathroom upstairs, or I could live up there. And if you're wondering if I can work, no, I can't. I should qualify for short-term disability with this. I can't drive either.

Hubby was sort of distraught at first when I told him, and wanted to come home, but knew after we talked for a bit that the best thing was for him to continue the work he is doing. I don't know why I'm not more stressed than I am about this turn of events, but I guess I've just sort of surrendered to it all. My nanny is still coming during the daytime to help with Lucy, and I'm lining up friends to come in the evenings and on the weekends to help with Lucy. I'm getting around okay between the crutches and the walker. I just can't carry Lucy anywhere. Lucy doesn't really understand why Mommy can't pick her up or play with her as much, but she is settling down a bit. Poor girl.

I guess the good news is that now I'm not working for a while...while I do really need the money, I'll make most of my salary on disability, and am forced to slow down and take care of myself more. People are bringing food...it's good to have friends and family who care.

A Different Path

I am now, temporarily, a single mom.

My husband had a serious relapse after a long series of small relapses. I won't go into the details, but there was plenty of heartache to go around. Finally, he agreed to inpatient treatment, and the recommended program is in a southwestern state. He left on Thursday morning, and will be gone for a minimum of 30 days, and likely 60-90 days in total.

Because of our history, I entered into parenthood with the knowledge that I might be a single parent eventually, but I don't want to be. And if this treatment program goes well and my hubby truly achieves meaningful recovery, then this will be a temporary bump in the road. But in the meanwhile, I'm piecing together a life for Lucy and myself on our own. I have twice as much childcare to pay for, and no personal time at all. Lucy is disrupted--sleeping poorly, wants to be held all the time. She's not really fussy, but normally she can entertain herself for a decent period of time.

I really should find a counselor for myself, and an Al-Anon meeting. But that requires more childcare, which isn't really in the budget. I don't have a large support network in Portland, because I have been focused first on my pregnancy and then with parenting since I moved back here. Also, things have been falling apart for several months, and I've isolated myself. So now I am working on cultivating some support. So far, I've had some luck, thankfully.

Did I mention that the program is very expensive? And we just lost a large chunk of our income by sending hubby to treatment? Thankfully our insurance pays for part of it, but the remaining portion is still staggering. I make a good income, but I don't know if it is enough--I've already had to borrow money to get this started.

I haven't really had much time to think about all that has transpired yet, but I know that is coming soon.

Hey, at least I've lost a little weight! But I'm finding that I have a bit of reflux when I am really stressed. I don't usually have it, and no food ever gets stuck or comes back up, I still never barf. I don't think the band needs to be loosened.

This program is really our only option, though. Addiction is deadly, and I know he will die early without real, meaningful treatment and recovery. I do love him dearly. And I do believe that addicted people are sick, not bad. But that doesn't keep me from hating the behavior, or being angry and hurt, and resentful for being left holding the bag here at home. I guess you could say I'm struggling.

That's my stuff today.

Finally

The scale is finally moving. After about 10 or so days at the exact same weight, it went down 2 pounds. It stayed there for about 4 days, then it went down another pound today. Whew!

For the first time since I was banded, I started having heartburn last week. It wasn't when I ate, it was always when I went to bed, which was usually about 3 hours after I eat. And even weirder, when I am home with Lucy, I lay down to nap with her pretty often, and would never get heartburn then. But finally I realized it was probably just my period causing it. It never happened before, but the last few nights I haven't had it. I did reduce my bread and rice intake, which I probably needed to do anyway. So I guess it turned out to be a good thing, since it helped me change my behavior, which is what the band is all about, isn't it?

I had a comment recently about the blog and about getting the VSG instead of the band. I think that's great. I've often thought that if I needed to have a revision done for some reason, I would have a sleeve instead. Finding the sweet spot with the band can be a pain. Every surgery has its pluses and minuses, but the VSG sounds like a pretty good surgery, and I know of a lot of former bandsters who had to revise and went to that. No matter how one feels about the band, I would definitely recommend something like a sleeve to anyone who is going to be living a significant distance from a follow-up care surgeon. Sometimes you need to be seen right away for a too-tight band, and if you have to fly somewhere it is a real problem.

I'll post some recent Lucy pics when I have another minute--right now, she beckons, adieu!