Nutritional Upheaval

I’m not that old, but like many others I’ve been through countless diets, life changes, recommendations, scientifically based sort-of facts-for-now stuff.

Along the way I have discovered a few things I probably could have gotten large government grants for. Too strict does not work. Too lax does not work. Reasonable works. Reasonable works even better with exercise.

Results are even more pronounced when everything else is in order: chakra, auras, spirits, godliness, centering, being comfortable in the universe. I have a hard time believing anyone is 100% comfortable in or with their own being 100% of the time. The odds just aren’t in that scenario’s favor. But, as long as we are operating with a more-good-than-bad mentality, things can mostly go well.

Five months into an enthusiastic recommitment to my own well-being, well…  I experienced a nutritional upheaval. Not in a good way; in a birthday-triggered sort of way. Celebrations tend to derail me. Luckily they are mostly scattered among weeks of normalcy. Last week, I abandoned normalcy. Back on the “food is fun” band wagon, I barreled straight through the swinging kitchen door of delights and kept going.

Monday: Max & Erma’s, lunch with friends, and a little pre-birthday celebrating last year plus one.  Economically, it didn’t make sense to avoid the lunch special – tortilla soup and a cheeseburger and fries and a cookie. About half of the fries were abandoned. Afternoon sluggishness isn’t uncommon when I indulge. I argued myself out of my evening walk, and took a 4:30 PM intentionally short nap. I define an intentional short nap as one that I set an alarm for, fully expecting to be productive later on.

Waking up at 6:00 pm is disorienting. My two most common mistakes are napping and not eating. I wasn’t hungry for dinner, so I grabbed a homemade chocolate-chip Miralax muffin. There’s that age birthday-connected thing again. Fiber: I need the stuff. Might as well enjoy it.

Tuesday: The Buffalo Wild Wings experience: Margarita, Salted Caramel, Honey BBQ and Fiery chicken flappers, split 4 ways with one basket of onion rings, and an iced tea. One took a slippery jump and did a terrific tumble down my dress shirt. While unsuccessfully attempting to minimize the disaster, I slapped the iced tea sending a wave across the table into a lap, and ended up letting the sticky blob plop onto my pants. Coincidentally, I had difficulty dressing for the non-Michigan summer-fall routine we have going on here. I grabbed an extra, slightly heavier, long sleeve shirt just in case the air conditioner didn’t get the 65 degrees in July memo. The change left me too warm, but less embarrassed. Tuesday is a dedicated non-walk day, and I didn’t. I also didn’t eat much again. I was excessively thirsty. I was also up stumbling around a few times taking in and letting out liquids.

Wednesday: Rising earlier than usual was harder than usual after my interrupted evening. I noticed my ankles weren’t looking like ankles. I couldn’t even see my ankle bones. Obviously retaining fluids – the wings were covered with sea salt, so that made sense. Still, I was sore and headachy and unenthusiastic. I mustered.

Long, unusual, and unpredictable days demand early morning substantiality. At 7:30 AM, armed with a Sausage McGriddle (no egg) and a diet coke (no hash browns) I parked in my usual headed-to-Detroit ride-share spot at Sam’s. The first three hours of paper sorting, cardboard piling and kilo-watt generating were followed by baked ziti, a nice salad, a glass of sugary punch and a cookie. I skipped the roll and butter. The second three hours of learning, watching, doing were interesting and a bit nerve-wracking. The wind-down dinner break was a planned roll to Corktown’s Taqueria Mi Puebla (on Dix.) The headache never really cleared, and I didn’t have the energy to care.

Hard work makes me less hungry, but I know by now I have to eat even if I don’t feel like it. The big meal thing wasn’t going to happen but splitting one meal and adding a small dish seemed like a good idea. Even shared, there was still plenty of food. I didn’t finish my halves, and experientially ignored the rice, mostly likely, because I was introduced to Horchata. Ordering a small was a good call on my part, as was adding a request for water. I loved it. It was creamy and sweet, and would have happily helped me avoid dessert, except for the even sweeter kindness of a friend and the cooperation of waitresses. One 30 gallon red-velvet, silver embellished sombrero, a serenade en Espanola and half a piece of Tres Leches cake, I was pretty happy. And pretty buzzy, too. And a little teary-eyed. And achy. And sore.

Before falling into bed, I munched on another convenient homemade chocolate-chip Miralax muffin.

Thursday: I woke up with donuts on my mind. Actually, I woke up a little nauseous and carb-crazy. The only way to get out of bed was to slither to the edge. My ankles were still pretty solid. My rings didn’t fit on my fingers so I didn’t wear them. An incoming call about the availability of vase, determined that I would not be stopping for donuts. I did, however, stop for a medium iced Mocha, and a diet Coke. The diet Coke wasn’t for me.

Donuts. I can never resist donuts. It’s well-known enough that I am frequently offered post-meeting baked goods. I know I ate two donuts. I think I might have had an extra half. I know I added jittery and spacy to my list of growing symptoms. But, that didn’t deter me from the boarding the next celebration train. Pulling into Red Lobster, I decided to eat sensibly. Another round of round-shape inducing food ensued. One cheddar biscuit, two cheddar biscuits and a “can’t count this as vegetables” creamy Caesar salad later, I realized I wasn’t even trying. After the side potatoes, salad and biscuits, only 3 coconut shrimp (no pina-colada sauce) were consumed. Dinner, 3 more shrimp.

Friday: Disgusting. That’s how I felt. My previously control fibromyalgia was solidly uncontrolled. Every joint was swollen, every limb puffy, and my tummy uncomfortably bloated. My mind was cloudy. My head was approaching migraine achy. I did not pack a lunch. I had nothing readily available to eat in the house, and I was out of those easy-eat muffins. I’m really not that fond of smoky burgers, but it seems Burger King has turned into a semi-regular Friday lunch run with a few women I don’t see very often. So, of course, I went with justification. There are always coupons to be used. A Whopper with cheese, a small fry, a small diet root beer and what I considered to be my last fling of unreasonableness, a rather small hot fudge sundae, filled my eat-in tray.

So, there you have it. A week in a non-dieting mode had ended. Voila! Done with the episodic nutrition-lacking stupidity!

Shortly after sluggishly returning to my desk, a coworker arrived with a salad bowl full of individual ice cream cups from Stucchi’s. Luckily, I didn’t care much for the flavor I was offered. Unluckily, I was feeling feisty enough to go back to the break room and trade it in for another flavor. To my food-dazed credit, I realized that it probably wasn’t in my best interest to have another round of ice cream.  I stuck it in the freezer, for the moment, and then lugged it home at the end of the day. Why? I guess, because, I could.

Before that, before I could make it safely home, before I even left the office, there was one more opportunity for obstinate denial. The birthday celebration cake: Busch’s really does make a tasty sheet-cake. Have I mentioned my birthday? Yep, I went for cake. By the time I got there was no longer a determinable decorating theme, but it didn’t matter. There on the counter, cut into unusually large pieces, were dozens of pieces of cake. I did not choose the petitest marbled piece. It went down quickly in a completely unmemorable kind of way and left me with a sugar cough, incredible thirst and a deep blue melancholy tinged with a little anger.

I hadn’t even made a serious half-attempt at control. So, I rounded it out for good. Dinner was the 4 remaining left-over coconut shrimp, the last homemade chocolate-chip Miralx muffin and the formulation of a repair the damage plan.

Saturday: I spent a lot of time prone. Switch the laundry; lie down. Make the bed; lie down. Empty the dishwasher; lie down. That’s when it occurred to me. I had food poisoning. Not the traditional kind, but my special brand of “keep ignoring the signs and symptoms, dummy.” Within one week, I exacerbated every quirk physical quirk and concern I have: high sugars, low sugars, rampant FM weakness and pain, headaches that turn into migraines, thirst, exhaustion, fluid retention. It was also hard to breathe after one staircase, and more than once a leg felt as if it would buckle. I dropped a lot of things. It brought back memories of 298 and misery.

I weigh myself Monday and Friday each week. Monday, at the start of this debacle, I was something something 4.2. Friday, I was something something 8.6. In one week, it seemed I had lost almost everything I had accomplished in the last five months.

I also devoted two days to detox. Not in the traditional way, but in the chicken-fruits-vegetables-antioxident tea and water routine. Two days of reasonableness helped somewhat. Monday, I began to feel less cloudy; more awake. I almost ruined the day with a sweet coffee drink, but saved it with a veggie laden lunch at Leaf and fruit salad and more chicken for dinner.

Tuesday: today. I made myself walk to work. After work, getting out the door to make the short loop around the neighborhood took longer than the trek. 40 minutes to mentally prepare for 26 minutes, 1.2 miles, 19:33 pace and a measly 180 kcal wasn’t a bad restart. It also isn’t the 42 minutes, 2.47 miles, 19:13 pace or 336 kcal of the dance/walk two weeks ago.  I delayed weigh-in by one day. This morning I was something something 4.6. Net, not so bad – everything else, not so good.

Sometimes, when we do unintelligent things, we console ourselves with the thought that we will be too intelligent to ever make the same mistake again.

Sometimes, we aren’t. More importantly, sometimes, we are.

Quote for the week:

You are strong when you know your weaknesses. You are beautiful when you appreciate your flaws. You are wise when you learn from your mistakes. ~ Unknown

Enjoy this week’s Discovery Links:

Determining Pace: http://walking.about.com/od/measure/f/howfastwalking.htm

“Fibroglycemia”: http://www.fibromyalgia-symptoms.org/effect-of-carbohydrate-consumption-on-fibromyalgia

Drop the Fatitude: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=1366

Advertisement

Greening

I’m obsessed with green. Every shade, every texture is mesmerizing. Pines on Esch and Eisenhower; Oaks and Maples and Birch on Hayes and King George.  Shimmering in the morning or in swaying at sunset, they never stand still. Perhaps, it’s the movement that makes them fascinating; creating moments that just aren’t capture-able, at least not on my camera.

Due to a dinged and perpetually smudged screen, it’s not easy to pause the mapping app, but logic loses to chance creativity. I keep stopping short; sometimes fighting a little longer and then sheepishly circling back. Frequently unable to employ an appropriate amount stealth, I am at times, forced to speed-walk on by fear of an audience, and my own nervousness regarding the previously mentioned questionable practice of photographing other people’s property.

It only matters because I want to share them. If I were content keeping them to myself, I probably wouldn’t try so hard. But now that I’ve noticed them, they need to be preserved.

A few weeks ago, luck of timing landed me rounding the bend and encountering the gardener tending on the same morning. I really do try not to impose, but allow myself permission when it may mean something. So, I compliment the impact and offer thanks for the effort. I can’t really tell if the lack of much of a response is from being startled, suspicious or hunched over pulling weeds in a way that might not allow enough air for conversation. No matter. I hope she enjoys the memory later, as much as I enjoyed that moment in the present.

On another day, somewhere between late afternoon and early evening, I stop at the corner again, and hatch a plan I didn’t know was even incubating. Close-up photographing to the best of my phone camera’s ability, a little green light dings in my head. Go, go, go! I do. In cartoon mode, suddenly the greens are popping. The purples and the pinks, the yellows, whites and red appear in abstract over definitive shades of green. My disappointment in trees and leaves and needles is borne from that lack of clear contrast. There’s no way to convey the shades of green that either only I can see, or actually require in-person observance.

Cartooning creates interesting abstracts that still don’t capture the subtle shades. It does, however, result in inspiring impressions of a well-planned corner garden ready to greet neighbors and travelers. I’m pleased with the color-clumps, vague shapes, and impressions, because that is what it all boils down to anyway – personal perspective.

It’s like those impressive vacation photos that seem magnificent, but often are belittled by the phrase, “The pictures don’t do it justice.” There’s no way to convey a million colors through one electronic eye. You had to be there, which leads me to this. I guessing I’m being there more often; regularly. I still want to take it with me; just in case I never see so many green leave rivers again.

The hard part is being content with memories. The responsibility part is encouraging others to do the same. There will always be more richness in person, so walk with purpose. The memory of the experience, enamorable and elegant, undoubtedly makes the journey more colorful. 

Quote for the Week:

Enjoy this Week’s Discovery Links:

Tree Planting Government Grants: http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/find-color-pigments-hidden-green/

Street Corner Gardens: http://www.learn2grow.com/inspirations/gardenstyles/smallspaces/CorneringBeauty.aspx

Camera Apps for Android: http://www.androidauthority.com/the-best-camera-apps-for-android-188148/

 

simply non-absorbing

Canceled flights, postponed meetings, put downs, over-waiting, under-eating, the over-ignored melancholy of having missed the importance of affections; meltdown. The unusually stacked, short-time string of dismissals tweaked me one tiny notch too far.

The result was a temper tantrum; the kind that comes about when I haven’t gotten my way in a really long time. The sort pressure-cooker steam-off that surfaces when my worths (self or external) are ignored or devalued.

I never know when that’s going to be. I only know when I get there.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. Truly, I may have been headed toward angry-ville anyway, but I had an over-sufficient amount of help getting there. A few fast-run to dead-stop power kicks helped punt me through the uprights, and the wide-open door to fury–land.

I could have kept shrugging my shoulders, knowing from experience, the weight of the world loses its heft when you religiously exercise the muscles holding it up. I just chose not to.

Instead, I walked away. Literally, down sidewalks, around corners, unconcerned. If my random turnings turned me around, GPS would just have to guide me back. As usual, I made it on my own. A few miles and almost an hour later, I was tangled up in spent.

I de-shoed, de-capped, de-socked and de-shorted and decided I couldn’t decide what needed to happen next. Too confused to eat, too upset to make sense; too watery-eyed to read texts, I couched.

I really do try to avoid confrontations. It wasn’t always that way, and it’s not that easy for me now. Even though a trying moment might have ended, I can’t always get over it. I can’t always let go.

I’d like enlighten, enrich, and make the world a better place by pointing out bad faith and false profession, but history has shown there’s not much success in that approach.

I try not to tell it like it is, and give myself credit for having learned something over the years.

Nobody wants to hear the truth. Nobody wants to know if they are bossy, or inconsiderate, or lazy… or bordering on mean for no good reason. I know this, because I’m one of those nobody’s too.

I’ve examined the clichés, the verses and the proverbs. I cannot find any evidence to support the notion that we are all supposed to be sop-ups. Nothing requires any of us to be an emotional sponge.

Soaking in the dramatic static of others’ lives just isn’t healthy; repeated wringing wears away our civil surface and unprotects the soul.

So, while I strive to seem pacifistically accepting, I embrace an entirely different definitive power beneath my stoic surface. This is my solvent and my equilibrium.

I am no longer swaying with or subscribing to the soak and squeeze.

I am only self-obligated to osmose the good stuff, at my determination.

If there can’t be any of that, I’ll stand here silently; simply non-absorbing.

Quote for the week:

I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have life itself.  ~ Walter Anderson

Enjoy this week’s discovery links:

Osmosis for Kids: http://www.ehow.com/info_8650496_osmosis-kids.html

Minimize Drama: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/7-crucial-steps-to-minimize-drama-in-your-life/

In-depth Goal Posting: http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-build-a-goal-post/index.html

Airlift, Hats

It’s easy to be disappointed.

The hard part is to muddle through to see what might be celebratory.

Knowing the other side of disappointment is rarely ever legitimately celebratory, doesn’t deter me.

With childish pluck, I still believe happily in inflated potential.  I still stretch on for the possibilities; grasping for the secretive brilliance of wisdom hidden in only semi-illusive balloons.

I can’t always catch those fully fulfilled higher floaters. So, I settle for a one-handed sweep through the semi-depleted lower ones; methodically elevating each ground- dragging line of hope to my wrist. They can’t help ballast behind me in an oddly staggered parade.

Despite the spectacle, I walk on prepared to face the awkwardness of progressively jerking my arm up and higher up, willing each tethered struggler the gumption to fly.

That doesn’t always work. It rarely does.  In all honesty, the only way to pull off airlift would be with the help of a stronger wind.

There’s no hopelessness or helplessness in that.

It might even be the prize to recognize all fragile questions are easily transformable into launchable helium prayers.

Commit to the search. Believe, chase, capture, discover, absorb, re-secure, and re-release.

Change the world.

It only takes one great inner-to-outer revelation, and a very generous willingness to sport a celebration hat.

Quote for the Week:

Our disappointments, our defeats, our times of disillusionment, do not separate us from God Almighty. They actually draw us closer to God. Try and hold on tight to your faith. Kemmy Nola

Enjoy this week’s discovery links:

Dream Dictionary – Balloon: http://www.dream-symbols.com/b/balloon.html

History of Balloons: http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.balloonhq.com/faq/history.html

A Little Something for Everyone: http://tinybuddha.com/

Free-Throwing Freedom

Despite the surge of summery days and sun-lit early evenings, I have no wisdom to impart.

No revelations, no speculations; nothing.

Honestly.

I’ve been free-throwing thoughts to see what sticks.

My weekly word-canvas remains blindingly wide-open white-space.

It’s unnerving to realize audaciousness can be as intimidating as restraints.

Luckily, liberty affords options.

Truths convey there will be lessons learned. Freedom doesn’t always trump franchise.

Being frank, open, or outspoken isn’t the same as receiving special privileges.

Broad-lane misinterpretations assume an attraction for life without rules or regulations.

Not everybody wants to be rudderless. But, almost everybody wants the sway.

Even with the freedom, the liberty and the franchise, somehow, we still can’t make it work.

But, at least we have the freedom of speech to say so.

.

Quote for the Week:

“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.”  Andre Gide

.

Enjoy this Week’s Discovery Links:

André Gide: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1947/gide-bio.html 

Pledge(s) of Allegiance: http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm

The Positives of Negatives,  White Space: http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/jtaylor422-314246-balance-white-space-jma505-spring-2010-education-ppt-powerpoint/