I’m kind of surprised to see this on the scale today.
 18 February 2012 at 208.5 pounds Did you know that wheat makes me sleepy soon after eating it and, if I continue eating it, also makes me get less out of my sleep and wake up groggy and feel like crap with no energy all day long? Seriously. And it’s definitely the wheat. No doubt about that. If I eat enough carbs I can count on weight gain but the threshold seems to be lower for wheat than for any other carb.
It is time for me to turn into Cast-Iron Bitch in this household.
I cause myself enough trouble with temptation and succumbing to it. Going without food over half the day doesn’t help me either. It just makes me more inclined to be naughty*.
But when we’ve established that both adults in the household have trouble with wheat intolerance, there’s no reason to bring it into the house for the child. When both a child’s parents have trouble with a food, it stands to reason the kid’s going to have trouble too. And she demonstrates this. She had a much greater amount of wheat than usual the other day (normally we limit it to Ezekiel bread if at all), and she went into meltdown by early evening. She is normally well-behaved but boisterous; how well I tolerate her baseline depends on how well I’m eating. But if she eats wheat or a lot of sugar or a surplus of food dyes, all her self-control goes right out the window.
Today her dad made her breakfast. A baked apple with dates and nuts. She’s still hungry. I’ve been at the point for a while that I’m ready to ban him from the kitchen and this just makes me more determined. If he can’t be bothered to think about what the food he gives her is doing to her then to hell with him. He can keep his junk food stash upstairs in his room, eat what I give him and stay the fuck out of the kitchen otherwise. This is serious. All our health is riding on this, and all he can do is fuck around. Either he gives her things that are not good for her, or he gives her strange things she doesn’t like. Last thing we need on top of poison junk is a dysfunctional relationship with eating.
The catch-22 is that when I’ve been eating badly or not enough, I feel like shit and don’t have enough energy to keep up with that kitchen and with food prep. But if I don’t eat well and often enough, my energy will be shit and so I will keep eating badly and not enough.
And this is why, while I will lament the fact that children eat so badly now, I do not judge parents who have fat kids (Thea’s not fat, she just reacts badly to the worst of what we could possibly feed her). It’s HARD to turn yourself around and provide better food choices. It pretty much REQUIRES cooking and, if you really want to make sure your kid turns out well, a certain amount of meal-planning too. And those behaviors depend on a whole slew of other habits, such as keeping an organized house and personal routine, that most people anymore have a lot of trouble mastering. Probably including you, so if you’re the type to bitch about fat kids, just think about that a while.
And this probably should have all been a separate post, but I will sometimes run on. And now I gotta go because it’s the other adult in the house’s birthday and I have shit to do to get ready for tonight. Have fun, kids.
—–
*”Stupid” might be a better word. It doesn’t matter whether I’m breaking someone else’s rule. What does matter is that I KNOW wheat damages me, so the LOGICAL thing to do would be to avoid it all the time. Every time I hear some idiot say “everything in moderation” I want to slap them. Live in my body and eat nothing but wheat products for a week and then tell me how fucking awesome whole grains are. Asshole.
I’m about this close to putting WordPress through the nearest wall. Not major shit, but it dumps in my lap right when everyone in the household except the cats is annoying me–and give the little fuckers time, they’ll think of something.
Just because, here was my weigh-in on the first.
 01 February 2012 at 209.5 pounds I was going to do up a whole beginning-of-month thang with the weigh-in and pictures and stuff but I don’t think that, as an over-200-pound person, five and a half pounds is going to look all that different on me. I think I might do photo updates every ten or twenty pounds instead, rather than going by calendar date. More likely twenty. Also, I was way busy on the first because the other adult in the house’s tax refund came in and we’ve kind of been doing the Kid In A Candy Store routine. (He put some aside in savings and hopefully we won’t spend it all.) Which has meant going out a lot. I don’t get how people can be constantly on the go with work and school and after-school activities and a social life. I have been more or less alone* for so long that my tolerance to that level of stimulation has declined alarmingly. What you guys pass off as normal would leave me in the fetal position on my bed, either sobbing my eyes out or catatonic. Alas.
Anyway. Today’s weigh-in:
 04 February 2012 at 208 pounds I have actually been quite naughty since the surgery. Relatively speaking. (I would still put your average SAD eater or low-fat dieter to shame.) I suspect a lot of my frayed-nerves thing today is me trying to readjust to a lower-carb intake. It ain’t pretty. I even went to Noodles & Co Thursday with my daughter–and I could have gotten a salad. I really could have. But I was craving noodles in the worst way. Right down to envisioning what it would feel like to bite into them. Sorry about the visual. I regretted it immediately afterward. I got sleepy. You know all that crap that was circulating on the Internet after this last Thanksgiving where they were saying it was the carbs making people sleepy rather than the tryptophan? IT’S TRUE, YO. I’ve had this happen to me twice now that I’ve noticed, and I’m sure it’s happened way more times than that but my tiredness got blamed on something else.
And part of the trouble has, as usual, been the kitchen. I am so angry about that. I am actually fairly fucking fed up with telling the other adult in the house anything because he doesn’t listen. It’s bad enough I only have two people to talk to in my entire damn offline life, and one of them’s not even ten yet. But to have the adult blatantly not listen to stuff I have told him over and over has got me borderline homicidal and you better bet I would attempt to use the He Needed Killin defense in court. Watch your cooking temperature so the grease doesn’t spatter everywhere, asshole. Use a plate as your spoon or spatula rest, fuckstick. Don’t stack plates on top of glasses on the countertop, rectum-breath. What the FUCK is wrong with people? I’M the one who has to chisel all this shit up and our kid is the one who has to live with the mess til I get around to it.
And it’s really tough cooking anything when every dish that gets used gets given its own place on the countertop rather than it all stacked in a reasonable way (i.e., NOT plate on top of glasses–bearing a startling resemblance to the Space Needle, only lots less safe). So you start taking shortcuts for meals and next thing you know you’re backsliding.
I’m glad wheat and sugar make me feel like shit. I still occasionally indulge the wheat, but I have to be SO good about both now because they are self-correcting. I have that going for me, at least.
Oh, and because someone on my Facebook page wasn’t sure: I’m off all the meds now. Done with the antibiotic, done with the painkillers and I have much less numbness in my tongue now. We’re playing fuck-me games with me getting my followup appointment, but my surgeon does a lot of cancer surgeries and so I don’t begrudge him. One of these days I’ll get in and that’s all I care about. It’s just followup anyway. No big.
—–
*Technically I am not alone but when the people you see have been the same two people every day for six or seven years and you’ve been going to a homeschool gym class with your daughter for about four or five months and only NOW has anyone bothered starting a conversation with you (and you’ve tried starting them instead and it’s been pretty much fruitless in terms of interaction away from the class), it feels pretty isolating.
I just got a trackback from Lew Rockwell in the past day or so. BWAH. Wait’ll he gets a load of me.
In other news: Ho-hum.
 28 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds I’m recovering OK from the surgery earlier this month. Couple nights ago I noticed a shift in sensation on the tip of my tongue, and suddenly I can feel more and it’s gotten a bit easier to talk. I can talk anyway, and the differences are subtle enough that a stranger wouldn’t notice I was having issues (I sound like a bit of a mushmouth anyway thanks to my longstanding speech and orthodontic problems), but I definitely noticed. So, yay for that.
But I’ve only been off the antibiotic a few days and by the end of my dosing period, my insides were beginning to behave as if I were eating gluten. Which I haven’t been. Even with my illicit sour-candy eating and so on, I’ve still been staying away from the wheat. I guess the bugs in my innards are just mad at me, and it’ll take some time to fix.
Well, so the other day the other adult in the household was headed to Kroger and asked me if I needed anything. Yogurt, I said to him, thinking he’d come home with my usual Greek Gods full-fat plain.
…I looked in the fridge after he got back and it was Kroger’s organic label. LOW-FAT.
…
Is it too much to ask that when I have been preaching for months–nay, years by now–about the virtues of full-fat over low-fat dairy, and when this asshole has seen me selecting full-fat plain Greek yogurt, that he not get me a type that is thickened with starch? Seriously. Next time you’re at Kroger, if it’s in your area, go to the health-nut section and look at their store-brand organic yogurt. Oh, it’s organic starch. I don’t care! It’s useless crap! There’s no starch in milk, people!
I ate it anyway–am still working on it, in fact–because I need the bugs. I just hope I’m actually getting some and they’ll do me some good. Holy crap. I’m not happy about that. I’m not exactly raging either, but we have had longstanding issues around here with him not doing what I ask and paying more attention to frivolous shit where I am concerned than with helping me get my actual needs met. The one area in which he excels is making sure I have insurance coverage, and the insurance company is doing all the actual work and he should have had me insured eight years ago. Now I’m having to play catchup. Thanks.
Yeah, I’m ranting after all. Just… If you yourself are not low-carbing, but your significant other is (we’re not actually significant others, but in a lot of ways that’s how the relationship is shaped) and you know they have a family history of diabetes? Don’t be a stumbling block and don’t be an enabler of bad habits. Just don’t do it. It’s just the same, ethically, as if you’d hauled off and punched them in the nose. This idiot is going to wind up having to settle for visitation because I don’t see how this situation is sustainable long-term. I am getting better at sticking up for myself and holding myself accountable, but I don’t need to be tripped up in the process.
OK, enough of that. In other news, I’m debating whether I want to maintain a pictorial record of my progress once a month, or once a quarter, or what. What do you think? I’m coming due for another picture set soon. I hate doing these things. I have more thoughts about that but I think I’ll put them in another post.
Nothing like a crappy appetite due to a lack of crapping to keep one on the straight and narrow.
 21 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds Well, honestly, I haven’t been on the straight and narrow with the carbs. I was straighter and narrower than someone on the Standard American Industrial Diet, but I was trying to use sour candies to keep my saliva gland going (turned out the candy wasn’t sour enough) and didn’t want to mess myself up with maltitol. It’s a toss-up really. They were sour gummies and had a good bit of gelatin in them and I think that’s why their carb count wasn’t through the roof.
On the other paw I’ve been pretty good about wheat avoidance. I won’t pretend I have been perfect about it because I’ve eaten at restaurants a couple times and you and I both know they love nothing better than to cut all that good food with wheat and soybeans. Yuck. But I avoid wheat enough. If I know it’s wheat, I don’t eat it. Amazing how my insides are so much calmer without it, and that wasn’t all the Percocet putting my GI tract to sleep. I was seeing benefits from wheat-avoidance before the surgery–which happened 11 days into the month, just as a point of reference.
Years ago I had tried the blood type diet for type Os, which still lets you eat grain* but not wheat. Just from that I think I lost about ten pounds or so. No serious reduction in carbs–in fact I never saw an amaranth pancake I didn’t like, during that time. Dr. Davis is on to something, whether people want to admit it or not.
Still. Slowly but surely. I’m kind of tired of slowly. Surely. But we’re getting there, in both a healing and a weight-loss sense. I still have numb spots on my tongue, and the Perc every six hours wasn’t so hot so I’m back to every four, but I function, which is good. I could use more energy, but one goal at a time.
Isn’t that always the way, though?
—–
*Let me get a few details straight here because, unlike most people who talk shit about Peter D’Adamo, I have actually read some of his books. I think trying to follow his protocol 100 percent will give you a raging case of OCD, and his protocols become more detailed and more OCD-ish the more recently they have been published. That said:
- Type As are NOT required to be vegetarian. D’Adamo says they are BEST SUITED to being vegetarians. Crucial difference there. Type As function fine on chicken and fish, according to him. No, you don’t get to call yourself a vegetarian if you eat chicken or fish, unless you are one delusional motherfucker. Thanks for playing, drive on through.
- Type Os are NOT required to follow a low-carb diet. Type Os do NOT have to follow a Paleo diet. Type Os ARE allowed to eat grain or grainlike foods. They just can’t have wheat and a few other of the common grain foods most people eat now.
It is OK to disagree with the guy on scientific grounds, assuming you have better grounds than invoking “everybody knows” arguments or pointing out his lack of an MD. But holy shit, quit making shit up. I don’t know about your local public library system, but mine carries quite a few of his titles. It costs you nothing to look for yourself.
Those of you on my Facebook page are aware that I had surgery on Wednesday. In case the rest of you aren’t aware, here you go.
I had this condition in my left submandibular (“under the lower jaw”) saliva gland. It was about 6mm by 6mm, or about a quarter-inch in diameter. The saliva duct, meanwhile, is about 1mm to 1.5mm in diameter. Not a good fit. The surgeon did his best to catch it with an endoscope anyway, but it was nuthin’ doin’. So I have lovely stitches under my tongue now, and am hopped up on Percocet and Advil because I tried flying with just the Advil and you wouldn’t like me on just Advil right now. It ain’t pretty. OW.
Unfortunately Percocet has the unwelcome side-effect of slowing down the lower GI tract. Not to be crass, but I have been full of shit since Wednesday. I at least have also not been eating much (I could, I just haven’t wanted to), so I’m not THAT backed up, and a lot of it has been meat and fat and broth, so there probably isn’t much waste anyway. (Contrary to vegan propaganda, if you have a proper amount of stomach acid, you have zero trouble breaking down animal protein–and you tend to use a lot of it, too.) But I’ve also been noshing on my black-bean-and-cocoa birthday cake (something like this), so I’ve still got some stuff to clear.
Not even the coffee is clearing me. That’s pretty sad.
So I’m taking a break from the whole weigh-in thing this week, til I literally get my shit straightened out. I’ve got a few tricks to try and if they don’t work I’m hitting me some Colace.
Have fun getting that visual out of your heads, kids. See ya later.
From this point on I think I’ll be doing this weekly, every Saturday like I was doing in the previous incarnation of this blog. Here’s today’s weigh-in.
 07 January 2012 at 210 pounds Food record for the day:
Also, it’s interesting that I seem to be sleeping better. I’m not surprised but it’s still interesting. I have yet to get blackout shades for my bedroom and there’s still too much light coming in the one window. I had put aluminum foil over the other one thanks to the neighbors doing rehabbing on their second floor and not turning off the lamp at night. They’re done now but I’ve left it up. We never open that blind anyway. But the other one still lets in light from the street. Despite that, I have much less trouble falling asleep and several bothersome symptoms I had been suffering at night seem to have disappeared.
Yesterday I think I hit upon something else that might help. I got unusually sleepy and wondered what the heck was up, then remembered I’d gone for a walk with my daughter. So when I get around to adopting a regular exercise schedule I think that’ll be another nail in the coffin of my insomnia.
Could explain why my headaches seem to be improving, too. I’ve woken up several mornings in the past week afraid that a migraine was brewing, but after I got up and moved around and had some coffee, I was fine. Very NOT like my experiences in the past couple months or so.
Hey, I’ll take it. Not 250 anymore, better sleep, and fewer headaches. Low-carb is SO unhealthy. 
|
|
|
