Good morning

I was surprised this morning when I checked my sugar. 

A very good morning. I have just started taking supplements as per Syndrome X/Food Mood, Jack Chellam's books by the same titles, and this morning my sugar was below 200. Eating less carbohydrates and more protein. Although five minutes is a small amount of time, for three days in a row, each day, I rode the exercise bike. I also walked out in the country yesterday, and today I made maybe 10/12 trips to and from my car. Last month walking from the car to house, was exhausting. Yesterday I did not take Byetta, and I still got a below 200 reading of 157. This weekend I have so much energy I have actually DONE more and started projects that have been sitting unattended for months-well really years.  And I know we all have that, the oh yes I am going to get to that, but I have actually started in one two big ones. I definitely have more energy and a less foggy brain. 

Let me count the changes, and yes I have done this before but it is important I cheer myself on, or continue to pat myself on the back for what I am doing. 

Stopped drinking diet Pepsi

Stopped using Splenda or ingesting anything w/fake sugar

Started eating more organic foods, all of my at home dairy intake is organic now

Rode the bike three days in a row

Identified proper supplements, bought them, and started taking them

Lowered carb intake, increased protein intake

Weaned myself off Lexapro and Wellbutrin

No ice cream for seven days

I had lost all hope. I had felt so cynical about life and people and politics, and I felt or still feel like a great big failure and disappointment to myself. I heard on the radio that a person who has great regrets and guilt about their past and can see no future for themselves or are afraid of their future becomes suicidal. That was or maybe still is me. 

Like a bug in jar that tries and tries to climb the sides of the jar but can never get out. This maybe the beginning of another big change, actually talking about my feelings of suicide. Anytime any therapist asked me if I had thoughts of suicide I said no. I lied. Said oh no, but sometimes I have strong feelings of not wanting to be here.  I insisted that was different than wanting to off myself. Is that like a denial of suicide?

That's me, with diet after diet, book after book, therapist after therapist. The bug trying to get out of the jar.

But this morning when I read my sugar level I was happy with my accomplishment. It was a good morning.

And again

I have started over. I have started over a hundred times. Let me count the diets; Weight Watchers, Atkins, the one over eaters anonymous meeting,  South Beach, You on a Diet, French Women are Not Fat diet, Optifast and another version of Optifast on which I really enjoyed not having to make ANY decisions about food, it was very liberating that liquid diet. I have also paid for many gym memberships, and there are always more payments than visits.  Countless diet books and recipe books but I remain fat fat fat.

But wait. I am here today to tell myself good job for starting over and instead I go back and list the failures. That can't be right. But I keep trying. Maybe that is how I should look at that list. Not as a series of failures but a non-stop attempt to do right for me.

Yesterday I rode the exercise bike. My first steps into the Jack Chellem Food-Mood Solution have been taken. My sugar level is coming down. I have been making better food choices for about a week, and am taking supplements. 

My father was a very healthy man who lived to be 91 years old. He ate a healthy diet, drank spring water, stayed away from white bread, read Adele Davis' books, and took a lot of supplements. Brewer's Yeast and lecithin every morning first thing. When he was still alive he would send me vitamins for most of my adult life. I know from his example that it is way to live healthier and longer. I will use that as encouragement to keep doing this for my health for my life.

I have started over.

Then by Muriel Rukeyser

When I am dead, even then 

I will still love you, I will wait in these poems.

When I am dead, even then

I am still listening to you

I will still be making poems for you

out of silence;

silence will be falling into that silence

it is building music

This is October, and light changes. The change of light from "day to night" or twilight, right now it is at its spooky best. I like it.  

Even morning light is different. I can feel it. Summer's death. It is in the air. So this is the time of year I honor the dead of my life. Those who love me still and I them. My mother and father, my brother Bobby, James, Amanda, Chuck, Karen. I have a tape of my father speaking, that I will listen to. He has a lovely voice, I am glad I have it on tape.  I will remember them all, each in a special way. I will use my prayer beads in honor of Chuck.  And I will also remember those taken by HIV/AIDS Tom Lewis, Tom Hammond, Billy, Bruce Kyle and James. They are all a part of who I am. 

Maybe I can also put to rest some aspects of my life that I need to stop, or leave behind, for they are no longer of use to me. I could transform those aspects that hurt me, simply by ignoring the impulses, forever, as if it is dead. Like my relationship with past loves who have hurt me, or moments between me and mom that I remember and keep hurting myself with. Things like that. Maybe I will make a list of those most hated moments, and leave them here in the october light to die.

Change

All this talk about change. I feel too old to change, too old too tired, the task beyond my energy. I made some changes this year.  I quit diet pepsi, splenda,  lexapro and welbrutin. Just feeling the feelings now. There are a lot of them. I cry every day at least twice a day. I am using food to change my low mood. I have gained weight and once again experienced that horrible shock when I saw a recent picture. omg i am fatter than ever. Older then ever. I am only getting fatter and older. Staying stuck in place. Doing what I have always done. Run for cover baby. 

Every whim..

I have been indulging my every whim. I have been eating potato chips, corn chips, beef burritos, macaroni salad, pulled pork, baked beans, walnut cake, hot dogs, ice cream, hot fudge sundae, french fries, hamburgers and cookies. Yesterday it was more of the same. Macaroni salad again, a pound of it in one sitting. 12 dumplings. carrots, celery and veggie dip.  two steak and cheese LC sandwich. almonds. cheese. It numbs me. It kills me too. It kills feelings, fear, anxiety, the voice in my head that is my critical parent, the relentless one. Pot smoking helps too. I sleep so well when I am smoking pot. And I eat everything in site sleep smoke eat sleep smoke eat sleep-and so on and so it goes and nothing ever changes, not really. Talk therapy, ten years of pills, EMDR, diet pills, liquid diets, weight watchers, gym memberships, workshops, ten years of theatre, marathon movie watching, self help books, and more self help books, yoga, tai chi, massage therapy. All tried. All temporary changes. Still fat, scared, angry, stuck...and now older and focused on death and or escape. I am still trying to escape out my bedroom window. Lock the bedroom door. It took mom a good five minutes to get it open, I took out the window screen and climbed out the window directly to the ground behind the shrubs, jump over and running away again to the woods. She can't catch me. Did you every feel you had to run away from your own mother? 

PTSD is in charge of my every whim. Where IS that book on binge eating from Suzy?

Living with the feelings

A definition of the word organic is, pertaining to or coming from living things.

It is my goal to build my life from living things. Living, meaning to be alive, to have feelings.

Medication free means I have organic feelings, and at age 55 I continue to learn how to live with my feelings. The purpose of living with feelings, is to have time to mull them over, examine what they mean, ask myself what is it my body is trying to tell me.

What are my hands saying to me? I have eczema, and or dermatitis depending on which of the three dermatologists you ask that I have seen. Currently I am getting laser light therapy for it, twice a week, since December 2007.

Three dermatologists, and acupuncturist, Chinese herbal medicine, allergy tests, elimination diets, inter-net research, several topical prescription ointments, and vitamin supplements.

The problem started four years ago, my hands so terribly dry, they crack and bleed along fold lines in my palms. The palms itch. I scratch till I rip skin. It is horrible, and on occasion the severity of the pain/itch reduces me to a puddle desperate for relief. I wear white dermatological gloves to protect my hands and prevent constant picking and scratching. Pain sometimes comes to my hands and runs up my arms, making them stiff, and difficult to manipulate. Motrin helps when pain attacks come.

I have read that back in the day, people with this condition were institutionalized in mental institutions. I understand, and am grateful for the laser light therapy and the white cotton gloves.

I have decided that by learning to live with my feelings is an approach to helping heal my poor hands.

SAM E

 

Today I want to acknowledge all that I have done in the last year or so to improve my health. This list is shorter than I list of things I SHOULD be doing, but it is a start. I now drink water. I drink water all day long, or unsweetened ice tea. The last diet pepsi and or Splenda I had was in February. Considering I was a 3 liter a day diet pepsi drinker, and used Splenda in coffee, ice tea, cereal, water with lime, everything really, that is a major change. I also take my medications as prescribed. And I have cut back on the pot smoking. There is an exercise bike in the living room, and yes I have ridden a few times. I have signed up for tai chi classes which start in September. Most of the food I eat now is organic, especially all the dairy products are organic. And white bread/rice is gone from my diet as well. My long tern goal is to be healthier, and no longer in need of many of the medications I now take. yesterday I started taking SAMe for depression and anxiety.

Now the whole time I am working on all this I am mindful of how class, image, self esteem, and identity play into my long term previous attempts and ultimate failures in changing how I live day to day. But now I ask myself, if not now then when? When will it be too late and I am a goner, or unable to work, no longer living paycheck to paycheck, but hey I am independent paycheck to paycheck.

If not now then when will I forgive myself for past Transgressions all but forgotten by the human race except myself?