A Zone of Biological Indifference

Why do I eat? That question occurred to me today. I’m not always hungry, but I don’t feel full or satisfied either. Apparently science has put a name to this situation. According to an article from late 2006 it’s a “zone of biological indifference”. This means we are not paying enough attention to foods we are putting in, but instead being distracted by everything else – the amount of food before us, who we are dining with, etc.

How many times have you found yourself eating when you are full, even feeling stuffed? As difficult as it is to admit, I have done that. While growing up we were expected to eat what was put in front of us whether we liked it or not. That mentality stayed with me for a while, many years in fact, but at some point that no longer played a role in why I’d overeat. When I felt happy, when I was in love, food was not even an issue, but the minute that heartache and stress intervened food became a huge part of my life. Feelings of rejection steam rolled me with internal feelings of self-loathing and a mental tantrum of ‘they hate me so I hate me’. As a result I just didn’t care about me, munched on stuff I knew wasn’t good for me and, worse than that, I had no idea of the long-term repercussions of those actions. At almost 350 pounds, early stages of diabetes, issues of water retention and leg swelling, I know I did this to myself, even if it wasn’t deliberate.

Every choice has a consequence. It just depends what choice we make as to whether the consequence is good or bad. I have spent too much time over the years beating myself up over my poorer choices; over what consequences resulted from my choices, but what has that gotten me? Self-abuse resulted in more weight, more misery, deeper feelings of loneliness, and an internal battle to not become one of those people who become housebound. Other than leaving the house for work, or to go see family, that struggle has become far too real.

My daughter tells me I have to go get some friends. When I think about social situations among people I don’t or hardly know, my mind defaults back to the last time. That was actually 2002. A friend had invited me to a singles event on Valentines Day. Going felt strange, since that was the first time I had actually gone out socially since the birth of my daughter, who was nine that year. I chatted with a few people, but the longer the conversation lasted the tighter my chest felt. The last one I talked to was a man who approached me. He was nice, and there was nothing odd or uncomfortable about the conversation, yet that tightening progressed, panic began setting in and I felt like I would hyperventilate. If it hadn’t been for a friend approaching when she did I feared passing out on the floor! It’s ridiculous really. Though the awkwardness is something I have struggled with most of my life, occasionally there have been some I talked to and was immediately comfortable with (close friends over the years, my ex, and a stranger at the gas pumps a while ago come to mind), and I don’t know why those people were so different. That will always be a mystery.

As I mentioned, every choice has a consequence, like when deciding to buy a bag of Sir Zesty Doritos. When I eat those I know that the monosodium glutamate is going to make me ache for a few days, that it could intensify water retention, and as a more recent blood test showed, it will elevate my cholesterol a bit. So why on earth do I bother eating them? Truth is, I don’t know. After the first few they make taste buds quiet, and then I am aimlessly munching until they’re gone, or my brain kicks in and stops me. When the later happens the question is always, ‘What have I done?’

The true battle is translating the words ‘food’, ‘eat’ or ‘eating’ into ‘pay attention!’ I guess when it comes down to it this is why we have to use smaller plates, eat a the table, chew 20 times, savor the flavor, measure portions, and refuse to buy anything that isn’t healthy. Consequences from past choices prove over and over there is little self control. As a result we turn to good old trickery, or simply doing things different than we've done them before - whatever works!

I'm home and back to work!

The vacation is over, and it was a good one. About halfway through it occurred to me how relaxed I feel. I can’t remember the last time I felt so stress free. Being 900 miles away from home, to Dad’s, where I didn’t have to worry about money, or getting to work, or paying bills or… I arrived home late Monday night, and slept. Yesterday, those stresses threatened to return, but I pushed them off. I am not going to do that to myself. After all, there is only so much I can do and, if it’s done to the best of my ability, nothing more can be done.

While I was there Dad took me clothes shopping – an early birthday gift for me. We went to the same store I visited last year, and I found that despite only a slight variation in my weight from same time, the body proportions have shifted. My sister joked that gravity must be having an affect, because my top size went down a size, and the pant size went up a size or two (depending on the garment). At the time I tried on all those clothes there was the threat of the change playing on me, especially bigger pants. Yet I kept telling myself it is what it is, but it’s not permanent. In fact, I purposely bought pants that were a size too small for incentive.

Eating was different while we were away, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I gained a couple pounds, yet that’s OK. I come home with idea of change. My main goal is to stop being one of those people who hates the weight, keeps starting the change, but never gets down in size. I want to be one of the ones who set to changes that make a substantial distance between big me and mini me.

Toward the end of the journey home we stopped for dinner. There were the typical choices found in the boxed store complexes popping up everywhere here in Ontario, but they are expensive and not really that good for you – pizza, pasta, ribs…. Instead there was a small plaza with Japanese, Thai, and fish restaurants. We opted for Japanese. Though the flavors were slightly different than usual, it was really quite good! We came away feeling full but not like our belly was lead based.

So, I am home, and on my own for the summer. My daughter is away to work. On a sadder note, the kitten that we rescued died while we were away. She had been ill before we left, got better for almost a week, but progressively worsened. My friend did everything she could, but she didn’t make it. It was hard when we first got home being home with the other two cats and no kitten. In fact, Cat number two, the escapee, looked everywhere for the kitten after we came back. She had become like a mini mom to the kitten, but she will be OK. I saw a bit of her crazy self last night.

Now, to unravel our home so that Chaos (Can’t have anyone over syndrome) is not existent. That’s going to take most of the summer along side working. But one thing I realized while I was away and finally finding that relaxed state – I haven’t been taking very good care of myself, changing that is priority number one.

Escaping the Mummy Dance Mindset.

I’m in here somewhere. Nobody sees me, but I’m here, hidden beneath layers created by far more than I even care about anymore. What people see now is the aftermath, which, like the end of a party, is all over, and now it’s time to clean up the mess.

Motivation - I long to be friends with it, long for me and it to unit in a full out attack, yet there’s still evasiveness in the plan. Doesn’t matter, because I’m persistent, and extremely patient. “This too shall pass.”

Today an image crossed my mind, a comparison really. To the left is a mummy. Unearthed it is wrapped in old, dirty strips of cloth, and representing a long gone history of people and traditions. To the right see me in my current state, similar to the mummy, except my wrapping is really a cloak of obesity. That cloak represents a long history of bad experiences, mindsets and habits brought through the family line. However, like an anthropologist who studies people, I have spent time getting to the truth, to the root of what makes me tick and act the ways I do. I’ve studied my own bizarre human habits and behaviors, and I am certain the best anthropologists would never discover the truth beneath my cloak. It’s been complicated.

Yet, there comes a time when self-analysis can go too far. I’ve relinquished to the bizarre reality that I live in my own skin and hardly know myself. Where I’ve come from, what brought me here, isn’t really important now. Acknowledging the tendencies I have is. I know I have a habit of getting ensnared in issues of the day, and have habitually let those reactions control me, suck my joy, and enable a downtrodden attitude on life. Yet, because I know this, I come to recognize it happening quicker, and change my focus. Plus, I continue to come back to something a good friend wrote to me last year:


”It does not matter what kind of day you’re having, the sun will always come up the next day.”

This obesity cloak sheds much like unraveling the old tattered cloths on a mummy – one layer, really one day, at a time. However, there is one true difference between mummy wrap and an obesity cloak. The mummy was wrapped with great care, intent and respect. Yet the obesity cloak grew out of so many other things. Though it was never intentional, everything grew out of negatives - feelings of hurt, rejection, self-loathing, negative self-talk and loneliness, and me indirectly internalizing the actions of others as my own fault, like I deserved the treatment they gave in some way. Subconsciously, I allows all those things to suck the joy right out of me! I lost my light, my humor, and worst of all, I lost any sense of self-confidence that was once within. A false and negative sense of reality attributed to my current size. Too much time was wasted hating everything, including myself, and although I can’t change that, I can control what I do going forward.

That anthropologist within has been unwrapping my cloak, but it has become tattered and delicate. Removing it will take time. I have no desire to preserve the cloak. It can be destroyed, but beneath the cloak is a content self-assured woman who needs to be unwrapped with care. The weight of that cloak has caused foundation cracks and she will need strengthening in the process. No matter, it’s “out with the old, in with the new”.

The strengthening has been going well. After all, I handle what life throws at me far better than I used to. Much of what I deal with now would have been an immobilizing pot hole before, maybe even a crater into which I’d sink, but not now. Now I look for a solution. I know no matter how bad things are they can get better, and they cannot be compensated, comforted or buried beneath a mouthful of any kind of food. My goal is to figure out what I can do about it, and for those things I have no control over – forget about them. They have no control over me either. Regardless of how the solution comes, one quote forever sticks with me:

“And this too shall pass.”

Part of these changes came about after finding some closure through reconnecting with long lost friends and family, and putting peace over the incidents of the past. For many reasons I’d lost touch with people dear to my heart, and before reconnecting with many through the Internet, was encompassed by sadness I couldn’t subside. I figure that it was the girl within the woman who was forced to move or prevented from being in contact with close friends. They meant a lot to me. Peculiar really, I didn’t think I meant anything to those people. For many years I figured they probably forgot about me all together. After all, I was just a faceless kid in the past of many lives. I attribute that attitude to the negative household and words I grew up with, but I know now those people were wrong, there was no truth to the haunting words. Because of the Internet, and reconnecting with many, I know I mattered to many, and I had an impact on some of their lives like they had on mine. What it all boils down to is, “things aren’t always as they seem,” (or as we think they are/were), especially in the limited capacity for which we think.

That’s important! Acknowledge that each life is in a limited box of surrounding and separate environments. Mine won’t be equal to yours. We each live in a box of our own, but it’s up to each of us to look outside that box when life begins to sour. “Seek and ye shall find.” I mean that more than anything I have ever shared! There is a world full of perspectives, opinions and ideas. There’s a Lord above. These things are particularly important to remember when someone boldly shares their negative opinion about our appearance, dining, the way we do things or about the way we might think about or handle a situation. ‘They’ are entitled to their opinion, but that’s all they are entitled to. No other person is entitled to puppeteer me, to expect me to concur with their opinion. Sometimes I look at where it comes from. That person is behaving within the confines of their own box. Sometimes I dismiss their input and tell myself, “Thank God the whole world doesn’t think like them!” However, there have been other times when another person’s perspective has been just the anecdote I need to overcome my own sour disposition.

Realizing these things can be motivating. They sure help me realize I can be anyone or anything I want to be, as long as I am open-minded, understanding, and admit how different we all are. It’s up to me if the I let the words and actions of others hurt, hinder, de-motivate, or excite me. For now, let’s choose excitement, and keep removing the obesity cloak.

Put something positive in your mind

“Put something positive in your mind,” I read today. Those are simple words, “positive”. How many times do we get ensnared in the plate life puts before us? It’s a heaping plate full of stress, responsibilities, woe is me and all those things we find missing in our life. I know this is the plate that has been on my table on and off over the past few weeks, so when it comes to “positive” a battle can ensue.

I’ll the first to admit that there have been days when I don’t like the plate sitting in front of me, so I’ve substituted that menu for one of my own. Quite often that substitution is Sir Zesty Doritos, but sometimes it’s Crunches or Caramilk. Water has been substituted more for coffee and diet pop, and when these menu changes exist there is often ‘Whatever’ attitude. These substitutions aren’t happening as much as they probably could, that’s one positive to being financially busted.

I know that’s no the kind of positive the statement I read today implies. It referred to the thoughts you put in your head in the first few minutes after waking in the morning. The first thought I have in the morning is, “shut off the alarm clock” and the second is usually, “I better get up, I have to go to work.” Not much else traipses through my brain in the morning. I’ve never really been a morning person, and prefer quiet, but I also have to get up and get moving or I’ll fall back to sleep. I remember reading something else once about keeping a journal beside the bed to write out those weird dreams when first waking up. By the time I think to do anything outside what has to be done to get going in the morning I am halfway through it. I’m a night owl, but not to the same extreme I was when I was in my teens and twenties.

“Put something positive in your mind.” Even in the brief paragraphs I struggle to get past all the negative trash to something positive. After all, it doesn’t have to be placed in the brain in the morning. Positive can enter in any time. So, here are a few positive, a mini wish list:

• I will lose this weight – absolutely!
• The lethargic kitten at home that has been doing nothing but sleep will get back to her playful self by morning.
• I will be debt free in five years – it’s a stretch!
• I will see the happiness and peace in the way I’ve been seeking really soon.
• I will land on my feet with an income from a job I am really happy and excited about.

The top five right now. ‘Positive’ – I will achieve them all!

Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?

I’ve heard that statement many times over the years, but seldom in the context that I need to hear it in. We go on vacation next week, the annual trek to Iowa, and because of that annual milestone I have been reflecting on what changes have transpired between then and now – more specifically in me. Not much has changed. Between last July (2008) and this one my weight will look about the same to Dad. Last year I was about three pounds less than I ham now. However, within the year, what he doesn’t know is that I gained almost fifteen and went back down.

When I look at the long term, I’ve been within the same weight range since a weight taken in November 2004. That’s not far off of five full years! Back then, between September 2003 and November 2004, I ballooned fifty pounds! I am no example of success, at least not so far, and it’s these annual milestones that remind me of that. I remember last year saying by the time this year rolled around Dad would be pleasantly surprised at the weight I’ve lost. There’s no surprise, I am still the same as I have been every year since the one that left him in such a state of extreme shock.

It really annoys the hell out of myself. After all, I’ve been ‘determined’ to get the weight off. “By next birthday/by next holiday I’ll be down quite a bit,” I tell myself over and over! There’s the mirror, it doesn’t lie, but guess who’s subconsciously fanatical about avoiding any type of image flashback – mirror, camera, window glass… Of course, that would be me.

There are some noticeable changes within though. Last year I was far more gung-ho about getting on track, but this year I just don’t have the same urgency. I was also far more self-conscious about my size last year, wanting to crawl in a hole before anyone pointed out the truth. Right now, if someone were to point out the obvious weight on me, I’d likely turn around and say, “Oh MY gosh! Thank you SO much for pointing that out! Without your wisdom I'd have absolutely no idea I'm overweight.” Then I would carry on with a smile rather than spending hours downtrodden, which has traditionally been my reaction.

What I find lacking this year is enthusiasm to get the weight down. Instead there's a feeling of ‘forever’ fighting an uphill battle. I can't escape thinking that no matter how far I get there will never be an end to weight loss. It'll be nothing like when I quit smoking or drinking, once I finally got over those addictions it was over. Instead losing weight is always going to be a fight! I might get close to my goal, but I'll always be just a little off, never quite making it, and never finding permanent success.

It's crazy thinking!. After all how many people have reached their goal and stay there? Then again, how much do they have to keep on fighting to stay there? There are so many stories of those who regain the weight, who give in to doing what they want instead of disciplining themselves to do what is right.

My focus needs to be on what makes me feel good overall. I don’t mean temporary sugar rushes or salt fixes, but those choices that leave me less bloated, less achy and tired... The temporary fixes have consequences, like Sir Zesty Doritos leaving me feeling achy for days, and causing water retention. Sweet things filled with concentrated sugar leave me sleeping inside of an hour. Actually that is exactly what happened at my niece’s birthday last month. She had chocolate caramel ice cream cake. My sister asked me if I wanted a piece, and I said yes, but a very small one. She cut off a wedge that was under an inch thick, 2-3 inches high and a couple inches long. It was good, but twenty minutes later I was sleeping on the couch, and before eating that cake I wasn’t even tired!

I’ve never been one for sweets, it used to be the occasional brownie or Caramilk bar, but never regular consumption of sweets. However, I grew up in a family that ate far too many carbs- pasta, bread, etc. I've learned how the body breaks those carbs down into sugar within, and that's not good. Now I go more for the whole grains and fruit in moderation, and with the change in eating find I feel better, a lot better overall. So this is where I need to focus – on how the body feels after eating. Those foods that make me suddenly tired, or leave the body stiff, achy and bloated go. These are also the same foods that cause intense fluctuations in body heat, sweating etch - they’re out. Those foods that leave me feeling calm, peacful, even temperature, awake, and over all good – they are slowly becoming the norm.

Getting this right is also becoming far more important for my daughter's sake too. She’s noticing weight changes in herself, and I’m adamant about getting her on the right course while she’s young so that when she gets to my age there are no issues.

It’s time to stop with the excuses that cause me to put things off today … It’s time to put the excuses off and do today what can be done BEFORE tomorrow. The sooner I get it done the better off I’ll be.

Re-entering the land of the living!

Well I’m sure I’m down a bit more weight, and this body has to be totally deflated and cleared through by now. That flu that started a couple weeks ago intensified to an extreme this week forcing me to stay home in bed – “out with a bang” the saying goes. The fever climbed to 102.5 at its highest most of the day Wednesday, at which point my head resembled a lawn sprinkler turned on. The only thought I can recall repeated like a parrot, "Starve a fever…!" No food was going in, because nothing was staying, plus I slept most of the day like I hadn’t been in bed in for days. Yesterday, still in a trembling state but fever free I was at work, and today I feel a lot more like my joyful old self, although I’m still not keen on eating much. My only hope now is that my daughter doesn’t get this, because in one week we will be on the road to Iowa.

Today I feel smaller, the clothes are looser and retained water has been pretty much drained from my legs. It’s nice to see their shape again. Plus, I can feel my energy returning. After two weeks of feeling more like a zombie than human, this is great!

My last post is a blur, and I know I briefly mentioned the doctor’s appointment. During that appointment she was happy with the results of the blood tests. There are issues in my family that I hope to keep at bay, but the doctor checks regularly. We also talked about something else. I am one of those people dealing with depression. Dad believes it’s genetic from his side of the family. I’ve been medication for quite some time, which wards off the extreme anxiety and panic that makes my heart fell like it’s going to explode. It also saves me from an immobilizing dark, which is worse. The only way I can describe that place is like sitting at the bottom of a deep gloomy well with the only light being that circle up above, but there is no way to climb out. Medication keeps me ‘normal’; however, as I get older and hormones become unstable, I’ve encountered some scarier PMS days – days when death is inviting, and each month they get worse.

Over the past month this was the situation. Very scary! I felt like I was living my final days, like I needed to get my affairs in order. I didn’t feel like myself at all. I just wanted to die! The doctor blames it on hormones fluxes, which can go on for another ten year, so, it’s another medication, and we wait to see if it’s affective. All I know is I’m so glad when those few days of hormone hell are over.

The home front is chaotic. Cranky cat number one is slowly coming around to the Zany kitten with a crazy foot fetish. However, I don’t think I got lucky when the escapee, cat number two, was away from the house. She’s grown and she looks like she’s rounding out. Cranky cat will be even less impressed with the packages I suspect will arrive over the summer. More kittens! I sure hope I’m wrong. It’s not easy finding homes for cats these days.

There is never a dull moment. After vacation maybe there will be some peace for a while. Daughter is off to her summer job, while my spare time will be spent with a brood of cats and me.