I forgot to remember to remember…

After I finished writing the previous blog I spent some time thinking about the fact that the situation I have found myself in is not about food. I know on the surface it might look like that but I know that it isn’t. I have a history of fooling about with myself, which gets me into all kinds of trouble, the very least of which is a problem with controlling what and how much food I eat.

So what is it about…

It’s about allowing a very distracted and sometimes weary mind to wander into thoughts and ruminations it has no business mucking about with, and then once all bummed out and miserable, compounding the problem by being reckless about my  health, particularly food, to add to the punishment that I think I must deserve for being alive. How very neurotic of me, right?

This is just a theory, of course. But, I have noticed that lately I have forgotten every shred of spiritual, religious, or philosophical wisdom that I have ever learned that might have helped with the business about being sick. And, worse than that, I have totally avoided any real interaction or intimacy with any other human being who might amuse, nourish, inspire or inform me about the really important things in life.

When I am depressed I hide…and when I hide I am depressed. It is a vicious circle.

So, this afternoon I listened to some spirited chanting and missing sangha daydreamed about temples and mandirs, churches, and cathedrals that have inspired me in the past. While I was grooving along with some musical mantras I remembered the only temple that ever really mattered to me in the long run is the one inside my heart….. and that is precisely the one that I have been avoiding, and in fact have been terrified to enter.

What truth is lurking there in the stillness that frightens me so?

relapse

It’s been pretty hard to get myself back to the blog to write because I have been feeling so down and disappointed with myself. In the past 2 weeks I have managed to gain 4 pounds.That seems like a lot and it is, but it is what happens when I don’t “move” enough and eat whenever I feel like it without taking into consideration calories or portions. I had given up writing everything down in my journal too. I was feeling sorry for myself and angry about having to deal with doctors and tests and just sat around, watched movies and ate ate ate.

I went to the gym last night and did the weigh in on a scale that computes BMI, calorie needs, percentage of water, body fat, and lean muscle mass. It was good to talk to the trainer about all of this and he encouraged me to just get back on track, write things down and increase my exercise between gym visits (including 45 minutes of walking or other cardio…which I had stopped during my poor me snit) . When I was sick he called me a few times and I thought that was pretty good of him. I think it is really helpful to have someone to help me with all these changes and to encourage me when I screw up.

So, I will call this past few weeks a relapse and move on. It’s my over all progress and accomplishments since April that I am going to concentrate on this week. I still have to wait 7 more days to hear about the results of the biopsy. I am still worried about it but I don’t feel “ill” so it is all a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe it is the not knowing that is the most annoying…

About waiting

Well, it’s been just about a week since I was at the doctor’s office for the biopsy and it’s been a rough few days. I was feeling so frustrated and angry and then depressed about the whole thing. I did have one moment when I realized that there was nothing that I could do about the situation and that waiting for my next appointment shouldn’t jettison all my good intentions and fitness goals just because I was feeling so bad that I might have cancer. That being said, I don’t think that I do. Of course that could be pure and unadulterated denial, but I don’t feel “sick” at all except for the usual aches and pains associated with moving a large body through space, up and down stairs, around the yard, and in the gym. I did cancel a session with my trainer…and I feel bad about it and hope to rectify that today. I guess I was feeling “what the hell, why bother?” for awhile, but this morning I feel like I shouldn’t give up my commitment to wellness and activity just because I had the biopsy. I was doing so well. The exercise and weight loss has lightened my mood and enabled me to move with more freedom and enjoyment. i don’t want to lose that.

I have another session at the gym tonight and am looking forward to it. My trainer is very good at keeping me focused and positive which I realy need right now.

So I went through a few bad days, indulged myself with  some nice chocolate brownies, watched some Bollywood movies on DVD, then got back on track. I know the brownies weren’t on my food plan, but I decided that sometimes chocolate is medicine and it’s not like I went on an all out binge, just a stroll through the place I used to be when I was totally into food to avoid the truth about just about anything.

Now, I know that I have to be well no matter what.  You can be “well” even when you are sick. I hope I am not sick but whatever the outcome of the test I am going to be well.

biopsies and waiting…

One of the life changes that I have made over the past six months has included finding a family doctor and going for some regular check ups which I hadn’t done for a few years. I was really happy to get one as we have a doctor shortage in this area and I had been going to walk in clinics for such a long time if I needed anything looked into. The doctor is kind and very thorough…and very young! I guess I am feeling my age when the doctors look about all of 22 years old.

Anyway, she tried to get two Pap tests over the past month or so and each time there was too much bleeding at the site for a good test so she sent me to see a gyn to see what he thought about the various symptoms aside from the bleeding cervix…. well, his thought was endometrial cancer, so he did a biopsy yesterday and now I am waiting to hear the results.

Two and a half weeks of waiting….

He said being over weight put me at risk, as well as my age. I am 53.

Even if it is not cancer it will probably mean some sort of medical treatment, maybe surgery…

so I wait…

I am really glad I went to the doctor when I did. The outcome for this kind of cancer is pretty good with early diagnosis.

But I am still scared.

Sore muscles and a new routine

I am really glad to report that I have been back to the gym and trying out a new routine that is focusing on the “core” which is allowing me to discover all kinds of new muscles by virtue of the soreness I have been feeling at waking them up! After the first day back it was my thighs that hurt from sit stands and steps, and now there are a few tender places in my back and shoulders from the elastic band stretches and medicine ball workouts. Remarkably, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to feel like I was making progress again even with all that time off. I guess my muscles have recovered from their holiday while I was sick and are feeling really toned again. This is so encouraging. A few people told me it wouldn’t take long to get back into it and they were right. I had to take something for muscle soreness but now I know that it is only temporary and I can get through it. Success certainly breeds success and patience too.

As for food, it has been interesting watching myself justify eating too much… one day I had myself convinced I could eat anything I wanted and all I wanted because I wasn’t eating meat. Such a bratty kid attitude I was having with myself. It lasted all of one day. Eventually I realized that eating just enough and not more is just fine. Overeating is too uncomfortable for me now. I try to stop eating before I feel full and this I must say is the most significant change in my behaviour. I have been trying to deal with the wanting to eat when I am not hungry and ask myself a lot of questions to sort out what is going on. It’s a pretty good time to do some deep breathing and settling into the moment to face what’s bothering me, because it is usually an emotional blip that sends me off into the habitual response of wanting to over eat. Overcoming anxiety is a big one for me. The breathing and mindfulness meditation seems to be working.

I found a weird tarted up version of couscous at the bulk food store. It’s called Golden Jewel Blend and turned out to be pretty good. I made it with a vegetable stock cube which turned out to be too salty for me so I will make it with homemade vegetable stock from now on. The ingredients: Israeli couscous (round like pearls not little crunchy bits), risotto shaped red and green vegetable pasta, split dried garbanzo beans, and quinoa. It was quite an attractive mixture so the name seemed to fit. I topped it off with steamed broccoli and cauliflower sprinkled with crumbled cheddar that melted quite nicely just from the heat of the vegetables. All in all it was a pretty tasty and good looking meal. I didn’t add the butter or olive oil as suggested and didn’t miss it at all. The wee bit of cheese on top was enough. Trying out new things is part of the process for me and this one is something I will add to my regular fare.

Breakfast has become a wild concoction of oats, ground almonds (or unsweetened coconut, or walnuts), hemp granola, raisins (or dates), and sunflower seeds cooked for a minute and a half then served with fruit and yogurt or a splash of skim milk. Its pretty filling and tastes great. I have all the various ingredients in glass jars and just pick and choose whatever combination I want on any particular morning so it’s never the same from one day to the next. I like the variety of tastes and textures. It works out to be about 570 calories and sometimes I can’t finish the whole bowl. The seeds, nuts, and hemp make it pretty high protein and of course the fibre is very filling. All in all it has solved the problem of what to eat in the morning, is really easy to prepare and never boring. No need to add sugar etc. but if I wanted to I would add maple syrup or honey I guess. The fruit adds sweetness though so I don’t bother.

The only supplement I am taking is 1000 IU of Vit D3 on the advice of a physician who said it would help as a preventative against depression and low energy. It made all the difference in the winter when I was feeling so bad. I didn’t realize that I had such a significant deficiency of that particular vitamin which was discovered through blood tests. That and thyroid a little off had affected my mood to the point that it scared me into seeking medical help last March. That is when I started going to the gym too as he said exercise was the best medicine for all my various aches and pains as well as mood swings. I think he was right because I certainly am feeling better.

I am losing inches and pounds with these changes in my lifestyle and diet so I am happy with that. More than anything else feeling better about myself is the main thing. I had some really good counseling with a local kinesiologist and have ongoing encouragement from family and friends. Everything is good.

A few bad days… and then finally a decision about meat eating

Well, today is a good day and I feel better, but the last few days I had to pay for a rather foolish meal of fried chicken and if you can believe it, with potato salad. Even without the skin which I peeled off the chicken, the added salt and fat which I am not so used to anymore was just too much for my digestion to handle and I was feeling pretty lousy for over 24 hours. It was one of those days after the gym when we were busy and running late and thought it would be easier to pick up some fast food than to come home and cook a proper meal. Even as I was eating it I knew I would pay for it. I don’t have a gall bladder so eating stuff like that is just plain stupid. Cramps, nausea, yuk. So, I am writing this to remind  myself that I have to think of some strategies for evening meals like that when time is short and I am hungry.

Okay, that brings me to another thing that I have been pondering. Meat.

So the decision not to eat meat seems to be creeping up on me. Granted it has a lot to do with the health benefits since for me not eating meat means eating less fat and other less desirable food associated with a meat centered meal (like salt). But, last week a visitor from the blogosphere wrote to remind me that whether an act is compassionate or not has to temper the quality of mindfulness in making decisions we make about the quality of our lives when we are making healthier choices.

Last week I was happy to eat cheese, yogurt and sliced turkey, until I had this greasy old chicken. I made really good veggie sandwiches (basil from the garden, tomato, Swiss cheese, baby greens, good mustard on multigrain bread) and realized that once the turkey was gone I really didn’t miss it. With a salad, bean dish and soup it was a pretty good healthy protein rich, low fat lunch. It was also easy to replace the turkey with hummus for a tasty alternative. So lunches were just as easy and really good with the little time it took to prepare the salad or soup.

I have been eating local organic produce for a awhile now (which is easy with very good Mennonite country markets and farms where produce is sold from their wagons at the end of their lanes by the road only 5-10 minutes away) and good drug free meat is available too. But, it just didn’t seem right to continue to eat something that I wasn’t 100% committed to anymore as I try to focus on health and wellness for myself.

I try not to think about the animals that I have eaten over the years… I was in denial most of the time that I was eating something that was alive and kicking not long before it ended up on my plate. I can’t say that I am going to politicize this decision not to eat meat. Not at this point anyway. For now it is about choosing healthier food for me. What other people choose to eat is none of my business. I know some people will disagree with me about this, but it is good enough for now that I am not going to eat flesh… I love to cook and sometimes it was just from sheer laziness that I was eating meat because it is just faster and easier to prepare than vegetarian meals. Or so I thought….

So there… that’s that. I am still losing weight and now that I am back to the gym and working out I know that I am making good choices everyday. Planning ahead and coming up with strategies for thoughtful meals in stressful times without meat is an accomplishment as far as I am concerned.

Feeling good…

It’s amazing to feel like I want to go right outside and cut the grass in the backyard in the morning. I am feeling so much better. I don’t have much grass back there as it is mostly a collection of perennial gardens, a pond and a few little reading and meditation nooks among the flowers and the canopies of the huge maples trees that characterize my garden. I had a good breakfast and the weather is good so off I went. I have a German made powder blue and orange push mower that I bought about 15 years ago and only started using regularly this year when I decided that the electric mower was a little too much for my little naturalized area. I really enjoy the sound of the whirring blades and the clunky wheels. This is the kind of mower that my father had when I was a child, but his was a nice red brown iron thing without the jazziness of paint!

So, it feels so good to get outside and do some work. I have been remembering to use my puffer and this morning took some Benadryl as a preventative… yesterday I was feeling a little sore and stiff after my first day back at the gym but today I feel great. No joint aches for some reason which is unusual. I ate a lot of good food yesterday and remembered to drink drink drink. Also had a good night’s sleep. All in all things are getting better.

Back to the gym tonight…. adding more activity every day.

Acceptance and Compassion

I think that what I have been learning over the past few months is balance; especially in terms of my relationship to my body with its challenges and limitations as well as its beauties and strengths. Here is a quote from a book I have been reading today that seems to sum up how I have been feeling. It is from Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It is # 59/108.

“The soil of practice requires the fertilizer of deep self-acceptance and self-compassion. Harshness and striving ultimately only engender unawareness and insensitivity, furthering fragmentation just when we have an opportunity to recognize that we are already OK, already whole. Gentleness is not a luxury, but a critical requirement for coming to our senses.”

What is food?

Now this seems like an easy enough question. It’s stuff you put in your mouth to chew and digest and eliminate, right? So that part is easy. It’s the “stuff” part that is hard. What kind of stuff? And why do we put it in our mouth in the first place?

Food is nourishment for the body, and if I look the word “nourish” up in my trusty Webster’s it says, “to supply or sustain with food, to foster or keep alive in the mind.”

Of course after that I had to look up food which turned out to be “any substance which by a process of metabolism, a living organism can convert into fresh tissue, energy, etc. , a solid substance eaten for nourishment…or something that can be put to constructive use.”

So there, it’s a bit of a feedback loop, but I guess that the point that I am trying to make is that words like sustain, supply, nourish, constructive, fresh, energy are good positive words that have nothing to do with all the other reasons I use to eat, like:

1. when I was bored even though my stomach was full

2. when I was lonely and wanted to feel the comfort of food as a friend

3. when I was anxious or angry and just wanted to calm myself down with a familiar available “drug”

4. when I was in a social situation where eating was expected whether I was hungry or not.

Food turns out to be all sorts of things that aren’t included in the dictionary definition.

I am trying to find and prepare and eat food that is good for me, and that process has been very interesting. Last night I went shopping and except for some salsa, low fat swiss cheese, yogurt, and some smoked turkey slices, everything else was unprocessed, fresh or dry (like oatmeal, sunflower seeds, raisins, hemp seeds). Sure cuts down on the garbage and recycling when you shop lilke this. I am going to start to make my own yogurt again which  I did years ago, so even that plastic tub will be the last of it’s kind I hope. Too bad they don’t just deliver milk to your door  like they did in the old days…..

Anyway, I bought some raspberries… fresh, and expensive… but I love raspberries and they are FOOD, not junk. So slowly but surely I am changing the way I behave. I am making better choices.

Haven’t made a final decision on the meat eating question yet, but did decide not to buy any more meat other than the turkey slices, and opted for cheese, hummus, and organic peanut butter as vegetarian protein options…it’s a start.

Back from the gym

I am glad to report that I survived my first session back at the gym! I felt tired but my lungs didn’t hurt and i didn’t have any problem breathing. I feel so happy about this. I could have just given up and decided not to go back but i made a choice to continue along with my fitness goals even though I had a bit of a set back. Turns out I haven’t gained weight but actually lost 3 pounds. The problem with that is it is probably muscle loss so I will get on the old BMI scale next week and see if the over all has changed very much. So that’s that.

I have learned to keep track of the numbers I guess… it takes 3500 cal to burn 1 pound of fat and so that means I either have to decrease intake of calories by 500 everyday that week and/or increase activity by that much energy. By doing this I have been able to lose weight gradually and I don’t feel the awful cravings that I used too. I drink way more water and eat more fruit and veg than I ever have before. All these these things plus a goodly number of steps a day has certainly allowed me to see some results.

I also enjoyed the sensation of “new shoes” carrying me along. Don’t you remember that wonderful feeling as a kid when you tied on a  new pair of runners and took your first few steps….. they were like magic!