The Recovery Process

Not exactly craving carbs now. More like feeling rage about having to find food, fix food, chew and swallow food as a LC way of life. I think it's one of the stages of grief, this anger that is surging in me. I really fear/dread change, even good change such as changing my way of life, my way of eating.

Even now I know I can dive into a crinkly bag and avoid all these feelings, for a brief period. Carby oblivion is how I survived, wiping out aching emptiness and pain with carbs that knocked me out - my drug of choice from toddler through adolescence, into adulthood and my 60s: CARBS!

Not exactly craving carbs now. More like feeling rage about having to find food, fix food, chew and swallow food as a LC way of life. I think it's one of the stages of grief, this anger that is surging in me. I really fear/dread change, even good change such as changing my way of life, my way of eating.

Even now I know I can dive into a crinkly bag and avoid all these feelings, for a brief period. Carby oblivion is how I survived, wiping out aching emptiness and pain with carbs that knocked me out - my drug of choice from toddler through adolescence, into adulthood and my 60s: CARBS!

Yes. Me, too. It's almost laughable, though. If we were in earlier times, before convenience foods and drive-thrus, there wouldn't be any question of having to find and prepare food. I don't think the Colonel and Micky-D's has done us any favors. Not to mention hamburger helpers. And the low carb lifestyle? It can be summed up like this...$$$. If it's real food, it's expensive.

Beyond grieving, though. What are your plans? I think another one of your posts mentioned forgiving yourself...? Are you angry with yourself?

Don't think I'm angry with myself. Seem to feel compassion, more than anything, for the immature decision to use carbs as a remedy for loneliness and to quell the fears of inadequacy. Now what? Grieving, I suppose, just to see if there is relief in bidding adieu to the companionship of mute carbs in my life. My carbs now are cranberries and Goji berries, tasty after a fishy protein, and pumpkin seeds, full of zinc. It all adds up. Carbs are high.

I think you have the grieving idea down pat! I don't normally "miss" my carbs, but there are those times when I really do and I get so upset that I have to avoid them... This weekend is one of those times. We have a guest here and I'm cooking all this great food and I can't eat it! And when they bring food in at work and other people just order whatever they want and I have to think about EVERYTHING and if it might have something in it that I shouldn't have, etc. I think I bounce between grieving and anger at times like that.

Grieving involves lamenting the lost years in which I turned to carbs for comfort and solace. It's not the carbs I grieve, but the lost years in which carby food was my Best Friend. That's delusional.

That's how I see what I contemplate as a formal grief process as part of my recovery from being a carbaholic.

Lost time...Lost opportunities. I see what you mean. So what's your next step?

My next step is always the next LC bite that will fuel my cells as they do a job of cleansing this big body that I live in and that carries me - awkwardly - to and from the loo, as I flush away ounces at a time of the weight I've carried for more than half of my life. It's a slow weight loss, but it's a steady trend, even with the inevitable bOunCes that I see from day to day.

My personal recovery process involves contact with a man named Bob Earll, a man I wrote of today in answering a post about low self-esteem.

Just look at what I discovered!
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User:ZerendipT/Robert (Bob) Earll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jun 21, 2006 ... Robert (Bob) Earll is a complex man, someone whose name is being tossed around as people seek him out online. (Not to be confused with Dr. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ZerendipT/Robert_(Bob)_Earll - 16k - Cached - Similar pages

User talk:SCZenz/Archive6 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bob Earll's work in the 12step recovery field is the basis for my article. .... (cur) (last) 06:12, 21 June 2006 SCZenz m (moved Robert (Bob) Earll to ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SCZenz/Archive6 - 64k - Cached - Similar pages
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A charismatic speaker spoke of negative self-talk that started for him before he even opened his eyes. He said his way of stopping that awful hateful talk was to ask WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF YOUR INFORMATION? (Thanks, Bob Earll, for planting this seed of whacky wisdom in what passes for my mind.) According to Bob, his Evil Inner Voice went mute at that question. No reply.

Bob Earll writes books and does tapes as part of his Recovery from various addictions and bizarre behaviors from a weird childhood. Google on him for more wonderful stuff than you can shake a stick at. You are NOT alone!!!

OMG...when I googled on "Bob Earll" the first item that came up is the bit that I wrote for Wikipedia...I had no idea it was still extant, as a teen-editor challenged it as being specious or some such adolescent approach to a name that the young man had not heard and doubted the importance of. Sigh. I gave up and just thought the article was defunct. Seems not so. There is even an archive of my appeal and...well, it's a surprise to me that it's all available for anyone who googles on "Bob Earll". Maybe I did some good. Had no idea that what I wrote back in 2006 - three years ago - still existed.

See? We do not know how our actions are received. You are not alone. We are all suffering to some degree. I was so low in spirit yesterday that I could not leave home and ended up staying in, although there were things to do and stuff that I really wanted to take care of. I was too low in spirit to exit the house, start the car, drive. I was stuck in my own gloom. Today I got up and got OUT.

And thanks to LCFriends, I read a post that inspired me to write about Bob Earll, to google on his name - and to see that what I wrote back in June 2006 exists somewhere in cyberspace and that people CAN learn about Bob Earll, who so generously shared his life that it touched my life.

That is too cool, Zer!

Barely recovered from delivery of data (402.2#) by scales early on 6/8/08, I retreated to my bed, to dream of waking a few pounds lighter. At noon I faced facts that I had to get busy whipping up what I shall eat today to get up to my BMR:2423cals and to get as close to my target 182gProtein as I can manage. Salmon & onion with scant mayo, celery, HB eggs - that's the menu for a LC Sunday. Add to that some cayenne peanuts left by a kind soul for a willing snarfle by a passing person - ME!

Soon I had whipped up 15oz salmon, 2C chopt onions, 2C slivered celery, with a scant cup of mayo to lubricate the pink fishy salad. Added 2Tbs of VCO to finish that jar, so I can open the next jar. Boiled 6 eggs, two in fridge for mañana and four for today. No mayo on eggs, just salt. Got to save my mayo calories for fishy-mayo mixtures!

At 2pm, I'd ingested about half of the day's menu. So full! Rather pleased with myself, for undertaking to eat 15oz of wild-caught red salmon in one day. That's a lot of fish! Surely that will convince my metabolism that it can let go of a few ounces of fat, that this body is not in famine or starvation mode. Let's hope my body is listening!

Making better choices, as I grow in LC wisdom

Lots of the writers at this site, LCFriends, as guiding their families to a better lifestyle as they lose weight, learn better ways to lose, adjust their LC plan to show better results, to break through the inevitable plateaus and set new short-term goals to keep up the momentum in a journey that is longer for some of us than for others who did not need to get to 500# to wise up to what a better choice LC is than the more-popular low-fat plans.

Even without a family to guide, I can see significant changes in my LC plan as I read at LCFriends and absorb info on nutrition provided by savvy LC'ers writing at this site. What a rich resource LCFriends is for anyone who wanders in here looking for support and guidance. I've got my heavily annotated DANDR at my side, and I am reading about the Eades and others who are living a LC life and offering advice that maybe Dr.Atkins did not know in his lifetime.

I'm learning what works for my body and what I can do better without - as I do without my daily dose of cheese that was one of my first shifts in thinking as I created a LC menu.

From daily snax of cheese, I moved to occasional condiment portions of better cheese choices, more tasty, more pungent, more adventurous than my staple 5# log of cheddar Tillamook that I bought as part of my early LC menu. Now I have a wedge of stinky Asiago to flavor an omelet or to finish off a meal, and I occasionally have a crumble of bleu cheese to melt on a sizzling burger.

I'm also shifting to stevia as an alternative sweetener, in place of many other possible choices that now do not look like good healthy decisions for my body. I lean toward savory, so baking and baked goods are not so tempting to me as are savory snax such as Melle's LC Cheatos (protein of eggwhite meringues loaded with sharp cheddar flakes).

These changes will likely continue as I form my more-sensible LC menu and pare down from the hefty weight that I created by eating carby choices in a life that is no longer my choice. Today I choose to eat to live, living healthy.

I can hardly wait until the low-fat friends who think I'm eating "all wrong" as I use sour cream and cream cheese and full-fat mayo and eat lots of eggs - while they avoid fats and eggyolks - are asking me to tell them what it is that I'm doing to change my body. They compliment me now, as I am showing (in my face and fingers, anyway) some of the benefits of making LC choices that prompt my body to burn fat, to metabolize efficiently.

Getting around, even in the house, is a struggle for me at 400#, with a hinky hip that hurts all the time and that threatens to fold under me as I walk with a cane, but I know that I'm doing better today than when I weighed 100# more. Agh! Hard to imagine how I managed THAT!

And I am hopeful that I can get myself 100# lighter by Feb.2009, when I go to get my new driver's license. Yep, I want to claim 399# on that license! Got to get scrambling, make better LC choices, to work myself down 100# in just 8 short months. That's 13# a month. We all know that's a do-able deed for a person who weighs 400#, right? Right! Just got to make better LC choices more often. That's what it takes. Better LC choices, day by day.
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432.4#(2/8/08)... [color=fuchsia]Feb -5#[/color] ... [color=aqua]March -13# [/color] ... [color=purple]April -5.8#[/color] ... [color=blue]May -6#[/color]
[color=red]June:[/color] 402.8(6/1) 401.2(6/2) 401.6(6/7) 402.2(6/8)
Interim goals: [color=gray]432.4 430 420 410[/color] 399 390 380 370 360 350 340 330 320
310 [color=fuchsia]299(2/5/09)[/color] 290 280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 199
5'10"; 64yrs...and learning more LC nutrition daily!

What an interesting process is this LC journey. As I learn to respect dietary guidelines and boundaries or limits on eating, I see other areas of my life benefiting from the discipline that I am accepting as part of my LC life. For instance, finances. I've lately seen an improvement in how I manage my money. I wish I'd started to conserve cash sooner, but...as with weight loss...one has to begin where one is. Hindsight cannot help me to start earlier than I did.

I read somewhere about a wealthy man who started saving half his earnings as a paperboy - and who continued to save half his earnings all his life, as if he had a mindset to ignore half of his income or to roll half his income back into building an estate. Was it one of Dale Carnegie's examples of thrift? Not sure. As the story goes, this man continued all of his life to treat half his income as a debt to himself.

I wonder if one might do that today?

Is it possible to set one's mind to view 50% of all income as savings, rather than as disposable or discretionary income? Ah, the power in those two words - disposable/discretionary - a choice of language that is the key to solvency.

Just consider the mindset of anyone with DISPOSABLE income burning a hole in one's pocket - versus the mindset of someone who regards the money above and beyond necessary expenses as DISCRETIONARY income.

Big diff in attitude. Also in savings.

Anyone able to begin saving half one's income?
Maybe start slowly to save, with 10% or 20%?

No way to save much lately with the high cost of living. I am afraid to see this months light bill cause we have had so many 100 degree days.
What is going on with you today? I have anxiously awaited a post from you in our support forum. Sure do hope all is well.
Take care,
Jean

Not a lot of recovery going on with me today, as I do battle with obstreperous UPS (local) and accommodating UPS (home ofc CSRep) about a misdelivered pkg that was signed for on 6/9 and appears to have gone missing - all 10# of VCO and a bit of Stevita fruit powder as well. Netrition will initiate a tracking on Monday, when the school office reopens. That's where UPS dropped it off on 6/9, instead of bringing it to my residence (as it's addressed, with a strong notation "not to school office" as part of my address). I'm spitting nails as I repeatedly coax local UPS to admit that it is part of their job to deliver a pkg to its address. Finally decided to bring UPS home office into the fray, by email, and am reassured that the home office regards this as a misdelivery. While I await a call from local UPS, I must not use phone line (dialup) for computer, so I am hanging about all day Thurs, Fri, Mon and now Tues with no call from local UPS and with reassurance via email from UPS home office that they believe local UPS will be calling me to clear this up.

Ain't happened yet. My weight is rising. I'm not eating well - and I'd like to avoid dealing with UPS the rest of my days!

Hey Zer

How are you? Hope that darn UPS is sorted out....

Still missing you round the other place.

UPS is still challenged to deliver pkgs to this bldg rather than dumping them at the school office. This will be even more of a challenge in August, when the school office closes. I'm told by the mgmt "do not order deliveries during August", as if I am not entitled to have UPS locate this bldg. Grrr-r-r-r

Netrition made good on the lost box from 5/30, sending a 2d delivery that arrived (not sure where UPS dropped it off, but I did call at the crack of dawn on 7/10 to notify them that a delivery was on the truck and that I was hopeful that their delivery guy would make it to my bldg). Pkg showed up, with enough VCO to carry me to Sept. I'm set, I guess, for supplies - even if UPS is told to hold off on stopping at this address until the host has returned from their Aug. retreat.

As for that Other LC Place, it turns out that I am doing LOTS better at LCFriends than I did in 18mos at the Other Place, with strange and obscure rules and bizarre behaviors. So, as always, life's ups and downs have forced me to adapt to a change that seemed disasterous and turns out to be good for me. Sigh.

A friend at LCFriends writes of her work in past-life or sequential lives and of dreams that offer glimpses of what may lie at the root of current-life fears. All of it tickles something in me that MAY be ready to come to the fore. Maybe. So I find myself writing at 1am - and wondering if I am on the verge of discovering why I have accepted being obese for all these years. Kind of exciting. Figure I'll add it to my BLOG, in case I want to come back someday to see how this inkling grew into a full-out revelation.

Fascinating reading, about past-life memories that haunt us in present time. I'm wondering about a fixation I had that I'd die at 26 - and how surprised I was to discover that 26 came and went without my demise. Fact is, that's about the age I was when I shifted myself to SoCal, went to WW and took off 50# to get down to 180# and then found that I was not up to the attention that came my way as my stride lengthened and I wore a suntan from sunning naked on a small private patio that was part of a small efficiency apartment. I was as free as a bird, since I had outlived my expectations. That was when I doubled my weight in a heartbeat, to protect myself from a glimpse of the sort of 'power' that a woman in her prime can wield. Yes, it frightened me, the things that I dared to try. I dabbled in exercising some 'powers' that seemed to have no limit - and I found myself riding a whirlwind. Maybe that's why I wanted an anchor, a way to keep from taking off? Well 400# of ugly fat anchored me and kept me 'safe' from much - not all, unfortunately - of the attention that scared me. Oh, how I lamented living beyond 26 - and so I buried myself alive in fat.

How much can I tolerate knowing about what lies behind all of this, as I look at my life from the 'safety' of losing weight - of daring to let go of an anchor that has held me steady for more than half of my 64yrs? Dunno. I have a lot of days when I feel that I am living on velvet - as a veteran speaks of his sense of having survived experiences that many of his buddies did not live to tell about. He calls it living on velvet. Describes my sense of joy, even at 400# and 500#, that is so hard to explain - even to myself.

Well, isn't this an odd thing to be writing at midnight, nearly 1am of a day that will dawn and will find me struggling to get up and OUT the door on two legs that barely work? Turns out my in-home helper has work, a full day of work, and will not show up at 9am today (Wed) to run errands, tote trash and help me sort things out. She called at 8pm to say she has work, which we agree is her priority - to take a full day's work when it is available - and she will come to me Friday morning, before she goes to an 11am job.

So...I may actually get up and OUT to do for myself what I can do. We'll see how that goes. Might happen. Might not.

Had an illumination conversation with a nurse at my HMO, about my past history at that HMO, as she reviewed my contacts with numerous MDs and how long it's been since I last visited the HMO. She asked if I was able to come in for an appointment - and I said I was not sure it was possible, but that I'd try, if I could get an appointment with an MD who comes back from his vacation early in August. Turns out he's an MD who saw me a few years ago when my right leg swelled up HUGE and RED with phlebitis or some such thing. Got him on a same-day appointment and he fixed me up. Now I may get to see him again, as a desperate attempt to get a dx on this hinky hip or groin pull/pain (or bladder collapse?) that no HMO MD has deigned to look at or examine. Oh, interesting talk with a really nice nurse. She said she will leave my request for an appointment, for him to decide if he will see me. Hope he will do so. She says he is leaving my nearby clinic in Oct, being promoted to a higher level of responsibility. So, if he will see me in Aug, I have a slim chance of having a proper dx by an impressive young MD.

Let's see how that turns out. So I am thinking to move myself up and OUT, as a practice for just-in-case this young man agrees to see me. Can I get to him? Can I manage that amount of walking, waiting, sitting and standing?

How much weight can I lose in a few weeks, to ease discomfort on this hip?

Inspiration? I'll say! So I'm inspired to push harder on my LC program, for a week or so. And I am also inspired to push for a magical weight on my scale weigh day in August - 8/8/08 will be the sixth month of owning a scale. Do you find the date significant? Eight is a heavy number, a lucky number, in Asian numerology. Do you feel the power building up as I write? I sure do!

Power. Crackling power. Electrical.
Almost like in the movie "Powder".

EEEEK! I'm freaking...feel the energy...dare I let myself believe that I can own the energy and use that energy to pull myself out of this fat envelope that I have created? Sometimes, in the dark of an early morn, I think so.
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/394.8/199
WOE: Atkins+ALG; BMR:2423cals; 182gProtein; 128ozWater
432.4(2/8) 413.2(4/8) 402.2(6/8) 394.8(7/8)
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432.4#(2/8/08)... [color=fuchsia]Feb -5#[/color] / [color=aqua]March -13# [/color] / [color=purple]April -5.8#[/color] / [color=blue]May -6#[/color] / [color=red]June -6#[/color]
[color=lime]July:[/color] 396.8(7/1) 395.8(7/2) 395.0(7/3) 394.8(7/8) 398.0(7/10) 394.8(7/12) 394.4(7/17) 398.8(7/19) 398.0(7/20) 395.0(7/22)
Interim goals: [color=gray]432.4 430 420 410 399 [/color]390 380 370 360 350 340 330 320
310 [color=magenta]299(2/5/09)[/color] 290 280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 199
5'10"; 64yrs; Your feedback is welcome at my blog
Tango, anyone?

Wow I just noticed you hit the 300's there recently!!!

Congragulations to you.

Yep, I am barely under 400# and bOunCing a bit, so I am not yet into a full-fledged HaPpYdance - for fear I shall hurtle upward in careless exuberance. I am now focused on what I can achieve by my 8/8/08 weigh date - a significant lineup of lucky 8's for my 6-month celebration of owning a scale that offers me clear feedback - just data, not a moral judgment - on how my body works with what I feed it.

Thanks, Lynn, for your unfailing support in a long long battle to overcome my fear of success. Sigh!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/394.8/199
WOE: Atkins+ALG; BMR:2423cals; 182gProtein; 128ozWater
432.4(2/8) 413.2(4/8) 402.2(6/8) 394.8(7/8)
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432.4#(2/8/08)... [color=fuchsia]Feb -5#[/color] / [color=aqua]March -13# [/color] / [color=purple]April -5.8#[/color] / [color=blue]May -6#[/color] / [color=red]June -6#[/color]
[color=lime]July:[/color] 396.8(7/1) 395.8(7/2) 395.0(7/3) 394.8(7/8) 398.0(7/10) 394.8(7/12) 394.4(7/17) 398.8(7/19) 398.0(7/20) 395.0(7/22)
Interim goals: [color=gray]432.4 430 420 410 399 [/color]390 380 370 360 350 340 330 320
310 [color=magenta]299(2/5/09)[/color] 290 280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 199
5'10"; 64yrs; Your feedback is welcome at my blog
Tango, anyone?