Glad Tidings

This blog has been a wee bit depressing of late.

First there was my job related angst. Then I blathered on about my rebellion against exercising and the guilt trip I was on because I couldn't/wouldn't get myself to the gym. I even managed to dig up some shame and talk about eating.

And now I am going to reverse the trend.

First up is the almost 1 year holiday of losing 40+ lbs. Granted I haven't lost anymore weight since October, but, I haven't gained any of the weight I started losing last July, either. Well, I was down to 263 and am now back at 268- but those heady days at 263 were few and far between anyway. With hindsight, I can now see that I hit a pleteau in October/November- and that all I really needed to do was to take a break without guilt. (Of course that makes it sound so easy, when really, it wasn't and I did take a break, but the guilt part just kind of happened). So if I cut out all of my "shoulds" and really look at the past year I lost 40 lbs and maintained that loss. Period. That's an accomplishment.

Second, I got back into counselling. I realized I was slipping into depression (or rather had slipped into depression) and that I needed an objective third party to help me out.

Third, I started to budget my money more carefully. There have been ups and downs aplenty. But I have been putting about $200.00 bucks a month into savings/investments accounts for about a year. So that's really good!

Fourth, I am gradually getting over the need to not work out. And I am also clear headed enough to see that doing it to lose weight isn't enough of a motivation to go three times, let alone five times a week. I am also clear headed enough to admit that I like exercise, I like the comfort in it, the sense of accomplishment and the overall feeling of wellbeing it produces. But, when I turn the focus to weight loss I just start to not care, I start to resent the commitment and the time and the effort and the whole kitandkaboodle. But if I do it for another reason, it brings back the joy and excitement and freshness of exercise. I just need to shut out the Boot KKKamp instuctors in my head and do it for reasons that would really burn them up like:

1. It helps me sleep really soundly
2. It helps me feel strong and capable
3. It helps me feel centred and on track- like I have a schedule and it's worth sticking to (I guess I like being highly regimented....)
4. It helps me feel long and loose
5. It helps me get out all my shitty feelings
6. It helps me try new things
7. It helps me feel pretty
8. It helps me feel like I'm part of the world- not just living in my head
9. It helps me feel safe- I can take care of myself
10. It helps me feel better physically- my feet feel better, my neck and shoulders feel soooo much better.

Solution Oriented

I think I may have a solution to my puzzling exercise conundrum, or at the very least I've decided to completely ignore the boot kkkampers....

I will wake up 5 days a week and get to the gym. 3x a week strength training. 2 times a week core and cardio. Pilates on Wednesday in the evening and walks or bike rides whenever.

Of course I figured this out last weekend and have yet to get myself up early enough to do it.

But I will turn off that negative voice in my head, the one that's saying I'm not a morning person and exercising at 6 am is doomed to fail, and I will just try.

I will try to try.

Shame on Me

I feel ashamed when I eat.

Even after years of counseling for binge eating.

The shame isn't just when I binge. It's every time I eat. It doens't matter if it's a hard boiled egg or a bag of cookies. The only difference is the amount of shame I feel.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel that way, and it wasn’t until the shame lessemed that I even realized it was always there.

And the shame isn't just limited to eating. A year ago I was driving to work, late. And I was trying to think of an acceptable cover story, something that would be ironclad but also mundane. I kept berating myself for letting it get so late, (10 minutes) and remembering all the times I'd ever been late to anything. But it's not as if I come in late all the time. In fact, I'm pretty punctual. So I pulled up to a light and wondered, what if I didn't lie, what if I just told them the truth or a version of the truth? Shame welled up at the thought of saying I was late because I had to re-wrap my foot correctly because of my plantar fascititis.

My cheeks even flamed red at the thought of admitting I had a physical problem (weakness) and took time to attend to it (selfishness).

I got pissed off.

Why does my life and all my stuff have to be a secret? Kevin is very secretive and he feels so much shame at having needs and wants and desires. And I always get on him for it, but really, I'm no better. I'm worse. Why did it feel like sharing my problem was like stripping open my soul for judgement and criticism?

And that's how I feel around food. I don't like to be the only one eating. I don't like to eat portions that would fill me. I'm ashamed to be so venal and so raw. I'm ashamed at how much food plays a role in my life but when I hear other people they sound as obsessed as me- only happily so. So why should I always feel so ashamed? Why should my appetite be a secret?

Attack of the Boot KKKamp Instructors

I know what I should do. I should start from scratch. 30 minutes, 3x a week would probably be the best middle ground solution to my problem.

Finnito.

But the Boot KKKamp Instructors that live in my head are totally up in arms at the very thought.

All my life I'd been listening to the boot KKKamp Instructor as if it were a perfectly rational part of my psyche. That aspect of my personality is basically my mother, living forever in my head, except she managed to get a certificate for personal fitness training and then split into two distinct personalities: The original Drill Serjeant who's like a mean militray Dad and the Drill Sergeant's tag-along who pretends to be my friend by wheedling me into submission, like a mean, manipulative older sister. Together, they make an awesome tag team.

But the Boot KKKAmp Instructors really don't mean to be so mean. They just want me to have what I think I want (to be thin, to have more options, to be admired) but they just go about it in the most all or nothing fashion imaginable. There's no grey here- unless we're talking about a pair of grey sweat pants. And actually, come to think of it the Boot KKKamp Instructors do not approve of grey sweat pants on me, only black. Because, according to them, if I wear grey we run the risk of looking more fat than usual.

The KKKampers are driving me nuts, refusing to budge. I either work out hard or I don't work out at all. The KKKAmpers don't want to look at the deeper issues at hand: my sadness that I've stopped losing weight, my fatigue of battling something, anything- they just want to keep on fighting the good fight and get my ass into the gym and back into a 2 hour 3 time a week routine.

They think this hunger problem is as simple as just refusing to eat more then I need.

But how do I do that if I feel like a gaping maw of never ending hunger ready to swallow a cat whole when I do what they say?

And how do I that when I know it will only lead to bingeing? The KKKampers hate bingeing, but they hate introspection and compromise even more, apparently.I wish I'd just have some amazing revelation and get this over with already. The solution is so tangible but it's lost on me....

Muscle Bound Lady

I was walking back from dinner tonight with my fabulous friend Jenn when I realized, I am slightly out of breath!

Strange...

Especially considering I workout 3x a week.

Like last week, I went to th gym on... oh shit, I only went once. And then it sunk in: I haven't been to the gym on a consistent basis in 3 months.

How did this happen?

Well, looking back, it started with getting the bike. I felt defeated by how much hills slayed me and I couldn't seem to legitimately find time to bike and working out at the gym so I thought I'd bike more. Except somehow I never got around to biking during the week, only on weekends.

And then there was the pilates avoidance. I wisely decided to give myself some time away from pilates because Fiona was bugging me.

And then... I don't know. There were parties and drinks and travel for work and drinks and somehow three whole months have gone by with only a handful of sessions at the gym to show for it.

But as much as it just "got away from me" I also know I was doing it on purpose.

When I was working out really hard, (1.5-almost 2 hours 3x a week in the gym) I stopped seeing results. And those more intense workouts left me ravenous. "Rip someone's head off and eat it" kind of ravenous.

I thought that after a couple of months my body would adjust and the intense would abate. But no, I had having a really hard time feeding myself. I would go from a 2 to an 8 on the hunger scale really rapidly- sometimes within in a half hour. And I felt self-conscious, eating at work, all the time and not losing any weight. At first I told myself it didn't matter because I was gaining muscle-- which would translate to weight loss.

But that never happened.

Instead, I was getting more toned, which was great. But I was also bingeing more because there was less room for error with my intense hunger and my low blood sugar swings. Then I would feel guilty for eating so much. And then I would just shrug my shoulders, say fuck it and have more cheese and crackers.

And now that I'm not working out, knock on wood, I don't feel so out of control around food. In fact, I'm in a really good place. There's no angst. It's so nice.

And here's why 3 months have gone by with no consistent exercise... I'm afraid that if I do get back into a routine I'll slip into long workouts again. And then I'll eat more. And then food will take over again and I'll be miserable and obsessed.

I hate being obsessed with food. It is so exhuasting and I can't turn it off. And the irony is I don't even lose weight when I get like that because I'm seesawing between extremes.

So why does that prolonged, extreme hunger happen? Is it physiological, psychological, a combination?

I think it's both. There is a genuine increase in real physical hunger.... and man is it big! Uncomfortably so. It borders on being extremely "unfeminine" and I think I may have some issues around bulking up. I saw that wild hunger as a precurser to being some muscle bound lady freak.... I just couldn't get satisfied. It was so frustrating. And God forbid I missed my afternoon snack, watch out-bitch alert! And then I'd feel guilty for needing so much food so I'd punish myself the best way I know how, by eating something shitty and fattening so I can hate myself even more and then I'd go to the gym and work out for 2 fucking hours and gnash my teeth because the scale hasn't budged in nine months and I'm really fucking hungry and if I don't eat in 20 minutes I'm going to have a headache that will turn into a migraine and why am I able to leg press more than half the men in this gym? Am I a genetic freak who is meant to be big and muscle bound.

Fuck. Must think about this.

Please don't die

A perfectly rational side of me knows I am being irrational.

I spend time with him every day and he doesn't have anything obviously wrong with him.

But lately, I look at the curve to his spine with alarm. It's been curved, denting slightly out to the right, for as long as we've had Runkie, even as a puppy it was there. But now, I can't help but wonder, is it more pronounced, will it cause him pain? Is it pinching nerves and sending hot shooting pains down his legs? Is he okay?

Does he have poochie sciatica?

I've gone through this before, though. With Shalimar.

One day she jumped on the counter and I realized she was skinny and then I remembered that twelve is actually old for a cat.

I got so worried and so convinced she was sick, being eaten up by cancer, I worked myself into a frenzy and started buying her total crap food so she'd fatten up and enjoy her dotage a little more.

And then, weirdly, the anxiety just went away. (Probably when she woke me up at 4 am by sticking her paw in my mouth and I thought about throwing her out of a window).

Enough about me, let's talk about me

Where to begin? The last while has been hard. My on-the-job depression has been swinging wildly to and fro. Some days I come home and don't even think about my work and then other days, days like today, the whole ugly obsession seeps into my real life and I waste the day feeling sorry for myself. On the plus side I did apply for 2 new jobs which hopefully will result in an escape from the hillside hell-hole.

I had planned to go for a bike ride in the morning, taking care to walk up hills and inclines as per my new edict (will get to that) and then return home refreshed and ready to get shit done. Instead I have lolled around in my pjs all day, refusing to feed myself properly so I went from starvation to an intense stomach cramps because I downed two cups of yogurt despite a known dairy intolerance.

But I just had a revelation that may make it all worth while....

You see, one of the jobs I was supposed to apply for is at the company I currently work for. It's the next step up with the requisite $15,000 (potentially) bump up in pay. Which would be ideal, right, if I actually liked where I work.

On the plus side, this new job has more responsibility, different work, more strategic, more "authority/importance" (because the truth is I am horribly insecure at times and like to feel that my job confers some sort of authority or credibility on me when it really doesn't). In fact, in every way this job is more. More exposure to asshole managers and executive and board. More fun with Ministry staff. More fun with legal! More office politics and back stabbing and more more more of the hillside hellhole. So no wonder I spent the whole day dragging my feet, avoiding actually pulling together a resume and cover letter. Why would I want more of all that?

Well, because I'm a masochist, really. I have low self-esteem and I never know when to walk away. I don't like confrontation and have a mixed history of standing up for myself (I've done it but unlike all of the self-help books that promise once you do it regularly you'll have a better life my experience has been that all I ever do is stand up for myself and suffer various forms of passive aggressive revenge anyway). Most of all, I have an incredibly long history of being in unbearable situations for years on end so the hillside hellhole, while anxiety producing, does have a faintly cozy feel to it. And I get to feel like a victim/martyr: "Christ am I the only person around here with some goddamn integrity!" Which is great, cuz if I'm gonna get treated like shit the least that could happen is that I get to feel morally superior to the asshole- while being an asshole myself. (I complain about gossip and back stabbing- ha! I've made more than a few bitchy comments myself, lemme tell ya). Staying there lets me continue to play to all my worst attributes. My need for acceptance and approval (bigger paycheck, more fancy title, respect from staff under me {bah, I'm so pathetic}, shitty corporate culture, other people who are insecure and passive aggressive) and it's just a big stew of all my fucked up parts, mixing with other people's fucked up parts and it's getting worse. But it has the potential to be better.

But I'm starting to think the problem is all me. (Though taking all the blame is a classic tactic of my low self-esteem mindset, I appear to be extremely forthcoming about my faults, to a fault, and then admit the cliched sentiment that I'm my own worst enemy, [Which is true} and then present the tidy assumption that perhaps I am creating all of it). But it's not all me. The Hillside Hellhole employs other emotionally damaged people like me and the problem is how I react to stress, how I was programmed and continue to program myself around confrontation. How I can be justifiably spitting fucking mad and then get on the phone and sweetly handle the situation and even take the blame from the other person for their fuck-up that has majorly inconvenienced me. Even though I am really spitting mad! I will literally talk to them on the phone in a way that is as if I am apologizing to them for what they did to me!!!!!!

Why do I do that? Why do I suck up other people's shame, other people's mistakes so they don't have to feel the burden of being ashamed, which is what I assume, they would feel, if I blasted them for pissing me off in the first place. It's like I perform an act of penance for the thought of being upfront with them. And the scary thing is, I almost wrote "being mean to them" as if being up front and being mean were one in the same. They're not. Telling a co-worker they have screwed up, royally, and inconvenienced me in a respectful way isn't being mean. Or is it. Is it my job to even tell them they fucked up? I don't think it is, actually. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of it. But the me who's been bullied, who's had salt rubbed in the wound thought for a moment that I did have the right. But if not that, then what? Because they did screw up and they did cost me four hours of work. Do I get on the phone and sound tense and angry? Do I say, nicely, I spent hours trying to track this down and the least you could have done was returned my phone calls (my assumption was that they didn't call because they were purposefully avoiding me, but, more upsetting was the thought that they didn't call because I was below notice, as in, who cares if we screwed up and pissed her off, she'll mop it up, she's a nobody anyway. In reality they may not have called because they were scrambling amongst themselves that would fix this situation and were worried I would blow up at them?). What I did do was send a polite but brief e-mail, "the link is now up. In future you need to give me a months notice at minimum before you proceed with any projects related to web development." But that e-mail was so limp wristed it made me sick. Some part of me really wanted to say "ML made me feel like shit for something I didn't even do wrong and cced in 8 other people and humiliated me-- WHILE I WAS ON VACATION AND THUS DEFENSELESS!!! So now I'm going to take your legitimate and actual big screw up and rub it in and make you look like SHIT in front of the entire company. How do you like that mother fuckers, feel my fucking pain!!!!!!" But while I've probably given the impression that I'm incredibly self-centred and utterly lacking in integrity, I did clue in really fast and realized that was my shit and it was only a secret, guilty indulgence that lasted for .3 seconds before I felt vaguely uncomfortable with how sleazy it was. My point though is that my e-mail seemed a little too blase, my imaginary e-mail a little too crazy, so what would the happy medium have been, I wonder? (Though my manger gave me kudos for handling it professionally and respectfully, then again he is frequently attacked for not having balls...)

All of this to say that I always feel as if I am being dis-respected and I don't know how not to be. Maybe I'm not being dis-respected and it's all in my head. Maybe I'm blowing this one situation out of proportion because of the whole ML ccing in 8 people to diss me when I was completely innocent and I know that I will never have the opportunity to deal with that directly- office politics being what they are.

Plus I was taught to catastrophize. So it's my natural mode.

Health and Wellness Update

I did get Runkles the basket. It is super-fab and a picture is forthcoming. He fucking loves it.

I haven't been working out much-- see above. Plus, bike riding brought with it a number of new physical problems I was not ready for, including new and different forms of pain in new locations. My arm and shoulder hurt on my right side- bearable, but puzzling. After a couple of 14-15 K rides my knees literally felt like they were about to blow out. My feet started having extreme pain again, which affected my walking ability and oh, did I mention the scary, intense pain in my knees?

The knee pain began after I did a really hilly section of the goose headed towards thetis lake. I had been increasing the length and intensity of my rides and boom! It just happened. I'm used to some pain with working out and frankly I am quite good now at knowing how to distinguish pain. There's the oh-my-god-it-hurts-so-badly-it's-actually-going-to-turn-into-pleasure-any-second-kind-of-pain. There's the if-I-keep-doing-this-I'll-reactivate-an old-injury pain. The -I'll-be-sorry-tomorrow-but-look-at-me-go-right-now pain. And the no-pain-no-gain-take-an advil-baby pain. I know my limits. I know I can push until my shoulders are burning but the next day they'll actually feel better because all that lactic acid is unkinking my shoulder muscles. This knee pain was the pre-cursor to temporary disability/knee surgery pain. It just didn't feel right.

Hence my new hill and inclide edict. I am not allowed under any circumstances, no mater how ashamed I may feel, to ride up a hill or incline. I have to get off and walk. No excuses.

But I also stopped going to pilates. My excuse was that I had to travel a lot for work and I wanted more time to be outside. The reality was two-fold. I wasn't feeding myself during the day so I'd come home famished and EAT and then be full and physically uncomfortable, plus I would still have the lingering hunger headache with the attendant neck/shoulder pain. Trying to do pilates like that sucks. My body just doesn't cooperate. I know because I've done it plenty of times. So that's a legitimate reason not to go. Right. Yes. But, why exactly was I letting myself get so hungry that I arrived home with the beginnings of a migraine, low blood sugar and secretly knowing I would almost have to binge because my body was so out of whack every Tuesday night, over and over and over? One crazy day where I barely get a chance to feed myself I can see, but every Tuesday? What was I avoiding?

I was avoiding Fiona and her sizest commentary (they're piffling remarks but they get under my skin because there's a part of me that agrees). Mix that in with the upsetting sensation that occurs when I'm that connected to my body and viola, that class becomes an emotional watershed.

For example, the first couple of classes I came home and cried, for no reason at all. It was like my body had taken over and was crying for me. That's how intense it can be. So I was playing games with myself to avoid looking at ----- oh my god, here it comes again------ how it is I can stay in an uncomfortable situation for so long and keep coming back for seconds. Though in the case of pilates I think it's essential that I keep going and tune out Fiona's nonsense commentary.

And in the case of pilates I think I just need to feel all those feelings in my body and stop stuffing them down with food beforehand. I wasn't able/willing to do that with working being what it was for the last couple of months, my knees hurt, so I just stopped. No gym, hardly any bike. No pilates.

Fuck me, I hate how it's all so related.

An ironic aside, I put on a little bit of weight with the time off from the gym and the vacation but this week everyone in my office started noticing that I'd lost weight and people started to comment (well, 3 people). But the thing is, I lost weight months ago and have been 35-45 pounds lighter for over six months and haven't lost anything since then. Totally weird. At first I denied it but then I just didn't care either way. Let them think what they want.