Tag: weight

Ashes

On By NB GwenIn The Journey2 Comments

“. . . Like ashes of gold in a cinnamon-flame,
My youthful desires have been burnt with the years–
And tonight in the chilling sunset-wind
A cicada, singing, weighs on my heart.”
― Haoran Meng

It’s been a while.

The past year has been rough, to put it midly.

Am I a phoenix, rising from the ashes? Not really. I’m more an old nag trying to find a greener pasteur to ease my life.

I want to be a phoenix though. I’m losing hope. I’ve become numb. There’s ashes all around me and I don’t know how to sweep them away. I don’t know how to burn that fire to help me rise.

I’ve tried for over a decade to get help with my weight, my self image, my mental health. I’m so tired of fighting. My medications make me gain weight, my health conditions make it harder to lose weight. I’ve gone to a bariatric surgeon and got rejected due to my depression. I’ve tried every fad diet, every non fad diet, I’ve gone to a dietitian, trainer; when I say I have tried everything, I literally have – even those stupid fad pills.

My life is chaos. My husband is on the list for a Parkinson’s implant and cannot work until after that surgery minimum. Meanwhile, I chug along. Drive our child to school. drive to get coffee, drive to work, sit for eight hours, drive to home, eat, sleep, rinse, repeat.

I’ve tried explaining my life to others. I get told – you just need to exercise more, you need to eat healthier, it’s all in your head, no gain without pain. I put on my mask and just nod in silent numb agreement. They don’t know. I eat healthy – I LOVE veggies, lean meats, I love healthy food. It’s finding the energy to properly prep and cook that I struggle with. I do all the manual labour at home – I shovel, I snow blow, I mow, I build, I care and tend to everyone in the house. I’m exhausted. My spoons are gone, they took the last train out years ago.

I want to read my books, but the fog in my head makes it almost impossible to focus. That’s almost more depressing than the physical. I was smart. Now, I feel empty.

I turned 49 this year. I have so many regrets.

This post took on a direction I didn’t expect. I’ve held on to so much over the last while. Lost two more friends within six months of each other. Getting older is painful. Menopause is miserable.

I’ll never be beautiful. I’ll never be the woman I want to be. Slim, active, flexible – I used to be those things and I didn’t even know it. I remember a saying, paraphrasing – youth is wasted on the young. What I wouldn’t give to have myself back, dig myself out of the ashes and hold myself up to the light.

Beauty from the ashes, life from the earth. Fill my heart up from that shimmering pool of fire. Make me feel that passion for life once again.

Céline Dion – Ashes

Dream On

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“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

I constantly feel younger than I am. I turned 47 a little over a month ago. Forty-freaking-seven. I am the unhealthiest I have been in my life. The bariatric surgeon says she can’t help me. I felt lost.

Notice I said felt? I’ve have found my stride. I have found my group of ladies who want the same goals and are helping me stick to it. I’ve already lost some weight, but it’s not just the physical weight coming off, it’s the mental.

I’m a very introspective person. Maybe too much so, in that I see and acknowledge my faults, whilst forgetting to acknowledge my strengths. This season is always hard on me, however, I do believe that this winter has been very hard on most people.

The days are getting longer, though. I’m no longer getting home in darkness. The sunlight dappling through the curtains in my living room are proof of that. Even with the snow we’ve been getting, signs of the Spring to come are starting to show. I feel that change. I haven’t felt it in a long time. I can’t wait to be outside, doing yard work, planting, growing things – reveling in that sunlight.

I breath in deeply and can smell those days, I dream of them. Don’t get me wrong, I do like winter. I used to be very winter active – skiing, cross-country skiing, hiking, etc. The cold seeps into my joints now though, it makes me feel old with the creeks and aches that come with it.

As I age, my mind has been left young. I am forgetful, I do struggle with some things I didn’t before, but when I look in the mirror, that image is not who I picture in my mind. I’m working of bringing those two images together into the one I want to be, the one I should be.

Meanwhile, I will dream on about the spring and summer. I will dream about being fit and working on my goals. Most of all, I will dream of having inner peace and loving myself.

Aerosmith – Dream On

The “Rock”

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“Miraculously recover or die. That’s the extent of our cultural bandwidth for chronic illness.” ― S. Kelley Harrell

I recently gave a friend an analogy of what my life feels like. As I’ve mentioned before, I have MS, asthma, and ADD.

Here it is:

“Picture carrying around a 20 lb. rock with you everywhere every day.

The first while, it’s easy – no big deal! But after a while, you get tired, you want to put the rock down, but you can’t. You have to take it everywhere – you take it driving, you take it to bed, you take it shopping, eating, working, etc. The rock gets in the way of everything – writing, typing, sex…everything.

Than on top of the rock, you have people telling you that it’s an excuse, your imagination – you’re just making it up, it’s not that bad. That rock is light, you couldn’t possibly feel that bad. Meanwhile, your joints have become arthritic from carrying it. Your hands are numb. You’re becoming bent. But you beat yourself up because like everyone says – it’s just a small rock, what’s your problem? They say you just don’t have the willpower and think you’re just being lazy and making it up.

You become depressed to the point that you would rather sit home with the rock than go anywhere and feel judged. The rock won’t go away, you wish it would. You try and try to carry it better, longer, harder? No one sees it – they just see that you are slower and slower and that it looks like you do nothing to change. BUT not only do you have the rock to carry, you still have to maintain life for your family – drive everywhere, plan everything. You have to work full time to support them and just keeping up with all of that and the rock saps you of what little energy and strength you had – but people always expect more and more of you. “You have your lunch hour – what’s your excuse for not doing anything then? The Rock doesn’t stop you, what’s your problem? The rock is just your excuse.”

The weight of comments and the rock become so heavy that life feels worthless except for your kids. Thoughts invade your mind that you never thought would. You start medication to help control the thoughts, to help you stay awake, to help you sleep – to help you live.

The rock keeps trying to drown you, but you keep reaching the surface for air. Sometimes the rock feels like it isn’t there anymore, sometimes it feels like a thousand pound bolder. But you keep trying.”

Josh Groban – You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up)

In for a Penny, In for a Pound

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“if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves.” ― Jeffrey Archer, Mightier than the Sword

I’ve talked before about wanting to lose weight. How desperate I am to shed the pounds and be healthy. It’s funny how in the race to gain health, I have gained seven prescription drugs, one over the counter drug, and six types of supplements.

That’s 14 different types of medications and vitamins that have a possibility of reacting with each other.

Take that in.

FOURTEEN.

What are they all for? Advair, singulair, salbutamol, nasonex, and reactine (the only OTC) for asthma and allergies. Citalopram for anxiety (LOL it’s not working). Modafinil in the morning to help me stay awake and focused…Zoplicone at night to get me to sleep. Yay MS and allergies and asthma…and ADHD.

To help my cognition I also take Nutrasea Omega 3 with 1000 UI of vitamin D, then I take 5000 UI of pill form vitamin D, a multivitamin, acidophilus, adrenna sense (for my adrenal glands), and powder form greens.

This list isn’t counting the Advil and Tylenol I take for pain. The Melatonin for nights I can’t sleep even with the zoplicone.

At 41 I feel like the most unhealthy person I know…and my dad is 76 with COPD.

It’s funny how putting it all out there really kind of knocks some perspective into it. What can I stop taking? What is interacting with what? What do I really need to take versus what is just a bandaid? How the hell am I supposed to be active and cognitively functional with all this shit in my body!?

I’m no doctor, but I can say – I have had enough. My goal over the next year is not just to lose weight, it’s to get off of all the meds I possibly can. Stop saying I can’t, and start saying I CAN. I’m old enough to know when I am doing nothing but making excuses.

Time to clean house and get moving.

Britney Spears – Work Bitch

A toothy matter

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“A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.” – ― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

First, let me start off by saying I am feeling MUCH better this week mentally.

Backstory time – I am overweight. I am positive I have mentioned this before. I have not always been overweight. Before I had my first child I was pretty small. Then I ballooned, almost literally – I swelled with her, had high blood pressure. I was ‘eating for two’. *facepalm*. It took me two or three years but I managed to lose almost ALL of the weight. I felt fucking fantastic.

Then I got separated.

Then I went through custody issues, divorce, teens, increased asthma, allergies and that oh so great MS diagnosis.

Needless to say – I gained weight.

When some people get stressed – they lose weight. Oh, not me. When I get stressed, I eat. I eat, I eat, and did I mention that I eat? You get the picture. Throw into that mix a completely fubared metabolism thanks to stress, MS, etc., and you get me. A very low self-esteem, 41 year old mom would dreams of being fit again.

This all snowballed a few weeks ago into desperation. I went on the It Works website and scanned around for their miracle weight loss products. Try not to laugh too hard. Please. I purchased three items. One I had used before – their It Works Greens…which are actually really good. I then purchased the Ultimate Thermofit and Formula FF.

I won’t go into details as to whether they work or not, or anything like that. What I can tell you is this – I am allergic to dandelions. One of these products contains…you guessed it…dandelions. I thought nothing of that simple ingredient (and maybe it wasn’t it, but I doubt it). Within a mere week of use I went from emotionally being not too bad, to verging on suicidal.

I won’t lie. I’m on a lot of medications and I hate 90% of them. The day after I stopped taking these two products, I started to improve. On the advice of my chiropractor (who is amazeballs) I started taking probiotics and adrenal support (Adrena Sense is the one I’m using). I feel so much better.

I DO NOT blame the product. I KNEW I was allergic to dandelions (although, to be fair, I did not see the ingredients until it arrived). It was possibly just the one item that caused the issues. I didn’t play with them to find out.

We have a smart TV with Gaiam TV. I’m going to do what I planned initially and start my day with yoga and end it with yoga. We have a gym in my building. I am paying my membership fee TODAY and starting to go Monday (I would go tomorrow but I’m using my lunch hour to help a friend). I am going tonight to buy a butt-load of groceries – a project I’ve been planning for months. Meal plans in the works, I always have a green smoothie in the morning (it’s a habit I love). Now for more healthy options and moving, moving, moving.

I don’t care about being skinny, I DO care about being healthy. I want to keep up with my 19 month old. I want to get off some of my medications if I can. I want to LIVE.

Now – about that toothy matter…and another reason for the post – a cracked tooth.

For about a month and a bit I’ve had odd tooth ache/jaw ache and couldn’t pinpoint the source. I finally broke down and saw my dentist last week. He couldn’t figure it out, but thought he saw something on the x-ray, and referred me to the specialist (Endodontist).

I saw the endodontist yesterday. I’m still in pain. He checked where I thought the pain was, then checked my upper molars. I never felt more like clocking someone. He uses a Q-tip sprayed with nitrogen (VERY COLD) to test the areas of your teeth. Pain shot from my tooth up through my sinus and into my forehead and down to the lower jaw…where I thought the pain originated.

October 6th I get to go in for a root canal for my cracked tooth (2 of them are). I will have it banded.

yay me.

Pain, exhaustion, and allergic reactions – I feel like I’m in Oz…Lions and tigers and bears…OH MY!

The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition