The Recovery Process

I wish I were half as dedicated as you are. It's a daily struggle for me to get out of bed in the morning so I use that as my excuse to not plan ahead too much. Using my fibromyalgia as an excuse sometimes, I have to wonder if being stricter would improve my lot in life as well.

Let's dig deeper, Zer. I have a feeling you may find the answer for both of us.

Is this a boundaries issue? Taking umbrage happens a lot as we post responses online, offer opinions and experience to all sorts of life questions. Not just LC issues, but life issues. Too often a simple opinion is (mis)taken as being a judgment - a critical judgment or comparison of a person's life with that of the writer's life. What I write is about my own life, even if my writing is inspired by a question set out by someone in search of ideas on resolving hir own issues.

As I progress in my understanding of LC issues, I find myself setting boundaries in all areas of my own life.

Is it a matter of having good boundaries, to accept anyone's right to have an opinion without mistaking anyone's opinion for a judgment on our own opinion? I think maybe it is.

Next time I feel someone is being critical of me, I'm going to see if I can step back and examine my own boundaries, to see if I am (mis)taking a writer's opinion as a criticism. Possibly it's just an opinion. Just as my scale offers data. Not too long ago, I felt any scale was judging me harshly by surprising me with a figure that scalded me: My weight.

Funny? Yes, I now see how funny it is to blame a scale for giving data that I mistakenly received as a personal shame or assessment of my value as a human being. Silly me!

Isn't it exciting that my LC effort is mending boundaries?

Girl I have been so bad..I have fallen and can't get up!
I got away from low carb after 7 months of being faithful to Atkins. Went to my Doc hopeful of a good loss after 7 months and not 1 lb lost. I couldn't get over the shock..had Doc re weigh me..no loss. I have punished me severly by eating any and everything since October. Now I am swelling and feeling icky all the time not to mention no telling how much weight gain.
I admire your contined effort. I just cannot get it together yet.
I have read your postings every day even while eating the most carby thing I could find.
I sure wish you lived near me..we could be friends in reality rather than puterspace.
Thanks for hearing me whine..I think I am mentally ill as well as obese. I have no rx for what ails me except for lots of stress.
Dying father,,controlling mother,no money,no job except being wife and grammy.
You inspire me every day!!!
Please stay strong so that I may can do so one day.
Love,
Jean

Jean, we ALL need support. Some of us cannot find it except at a site like LCFriends. That's why ~I~ am here. This is the only place I find support for who I want to be, who I want to become. Maybe you too can find support here for your own goals, your vision of who you want to become. Write ON!!!

As I await the arrival of the sandman with a sack of dreams, I'm hopeful that I shall see some interesting numbers whizzing by when next I climb aboard my talking scale - Saturday morning.

One more day of abstaining from gobbling, one more day of mindful eating and prayerful dodging. I'd really like to get a load off of this hinky hip, so it has a chance to mend. I'm hopeful that my body can pull it off, repair the damage that has had me hobbling painfully on a cane since Aug.2006 with a pinched nerve or something that my HMO is not the least bit in identifying. I'm invited to gobble drugs, to destroy my liver and other organs, by inept young people posing as doctors, stethascoping my chest as if I am seeking advice for a heart or respiratory ailment instead of for a piercing groin pain/strain that denies me rest/sleep. What a waste, to visit a clinic filled with such folk. So I've no plans to go back there. I'm on my own.

Taking weight off in 2008 will definitely improve my quality of life. As is, I am spending 24/7 in bed, with infrequent painful hobbles to a shared bathroom as needed.

Not much of a life for a 64yr-old person. Going out is just scary, as I cannot rise on my own from a chair - much less rise from the ground if I should topple over in my unsteady wobbly walking. So, this LC effort is a desperate effort to recover a life that I abdicated when I decided to hide myself in fat. Will I succeed in turning my caterpillar body into a butterfly? Hope so!

Even if I turn out to be a lame butterfly, I hope to regain some ability to rise from a chair, to lift myself from the ground, to climb up out of a pool. All of these things are worth working for.

I'd like to be moderately agile as I go to apply for a driver's license on my 65th b'day in February 2009. Awkward if I am disqualified from driving my own self around. Really awkward for me, as I have not developed any network to do stuff for me, to run errands or do all the ordinary stuff that needs to be done if I am to live on my own.

So, how CAN it be that I am still fiddling around and not doing LC faithfully?

Got me. I cannot explain my lackadaisical decline in weight - the bounces up and down, up up and down again. I've lost the same pounds so many times! Guess we've all done that.

Well, that's my lament for a Friday morn. TGIF!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/413.4/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)

I got an alert for a private message from you but it failed to open. Maybe I am too computer illiterate?
Anyways, I don't feel so hopeless this a.m. .
Life goes on and so will I good Lord willing.
I just need to get my mind set right to try once more to get some weight off.
Keep me inspired!
Jean
PS:
I got your message opened at last. Thanks so much for your kind words.

Jean, it's all right to be IMperfect here. Write ON, even if you feel you are not quite in step with your particular LC program. Sadly, we here are not ALL operating at 100%. Some of us are hanging on by our (half)wits, thankful to be among folk whose LC program gives us a glimpse of what we MIGHT achieve if we get our minds straight and stay out of crinkly wrappers that invite us to fall in and forget it all!

This must be part of the recovery process, when our Fiercer Self draws a line in the sand and dares our Timid Self to keep on fooling around.

Scary, when I get on the wrong side of me...or of my Fiercer Self
Basically, I'm scared to dawdle in the 4's any longer. The seething rage in me scares the bejesus out of me. I'm the last person in the world I want to tick off and I'm getting pretty effing ticked off at me for fooling around so long about these last few pounds and ounces that lie between me and THREEdom. I'm not at all patient with myself for losing these same pounds over and over and over.

Scary, when you are scared of your own self. I *know* how wicked I can be! I'll go to ANY length to avoid having to deal with me when patience runs out, as it seems to have run out. I don't want to find myself whacking chunks off with a butcher knife, which is an image that the Fiercer me is using to scare the Timid me - the waffler who is not always willing to sidestep carby temptation - into compliance.

Scary? You BET! Imagery has a LOT of power. Kills appetite, if you use the right images. So I believe I'll just get busy paring down so that the Wicked and Depraved part of me will relent, will quit sharpening that awful blade, spitting on the whetstone and testing the blade to see how sharp it is. Scary! Anyone else scared of their Fiercer Self? Or am I the only one?

Maybe so.

Oh, here's another glimpse of sheer terror that is helping me to get my procrastinating self out of the 4's and over the hump to THREEdom. Just wrote this and figure it's worth preserving in my own BLOG.

Too scared of my Fiercer Self to buy heavy cream just now.
Hey, as much as I want some of the WPP iced cream, I'm too scared of my Fiercer Self just now to risk buying heavy cream. Seems I got on the wrong side of my Fiercer Self by dawdling too long on the threshold of THREEdom. Woke up on the wrong side of my Fiercer Self, one of the scariest places I can imagine. One of the folks I never-ever want to tick off is me, for I *know* just how Wicked and Depraved a person I am when I'm ticked off. I conjure. I do. Not that I believe in conjuring, mind you, for we all know it's just foolishness, but when I get totally ticked off (as I seem to be right now, at myself) I can do stuff that scares the bejesus out of me. I fling caution and disbelief to the four winds and I just conjure and...stuff happens...scary stuff...happens. It does.

Coincidence?

Maybe so. I just don't want to be on the other end of anything that I set off. So no heavy cream for me until I'm sure that I'm well into THREEdom and not likely to bounce back into the 4's. I do not like the way my Fiercer Self is playing with a long wicked blade and sharpening it on a whetstone and acting as if whacking chunks of me off will do if no other way will work. That image chills my marrow. Cuts my appetite.

My Fiercer Self takes no prisoners.
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/409.8/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)
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What is this rage that is seething up in me? Egad!

Someone has noted that I'm close to showing 100# weight loss from my highest recorded weight of 508.7# on 9/9/04.

Sad to say, I suspect I have weighed a great deal more than my highest recorded weight. There were years when I saw doctors who did not have scales to weigh me. So...I think I've weighed a lot more than the 508.7 that I saw at a doctor's one day in 2004.

According to data scribbled in my Atkins' DANDR, the date was 9/9/04. Prior to that, I'd weighed in at 475# and thought THAT was a staggering high. I've been truly F-A-T!

I've been FAT and gone on interviews and gotten hired, believe it or not. It's been a long horrible haul, being FAT and hulking HUGE among co-workers who are younger and who had a brighter future than I dared hope for. All I could hope for was to be tolerated for working like a dog while others passed me by. Kids I was charged to train got the promotions I was never considered for, got promoted to an office with a door while I tried to hold my head up in a cube and act as if their promotion did not gripe my guts. I was given work to do for them, work they could not perform as they collected pay for a job that I was not considered to be suitable for. Oh, the pain of it all. That pain is seething in me now. Why now? I guess I did not dare feel it 20yrs ago when I got passed over again and again and again.

Pretty awful, huh? Yep, that's the life I chose for myself.

I think it stinks!

Maybe that's why I'm ticked off at myself.
Certainly that's part of it. Sigh.

Another kind comment from a LCFriend brings forth this admission...an honest admission of how I feel today...now.

Thanks...but I'm driven by fear, fear of my own inner rage!
Thanks for the kind words. But words cannot express how terrified I am of my own rage at how I've dawdled in losing weight while all around me are your examples of what faithful LC planning and execution delivers.

I'm scared of my internal rage at myself, as if I am in danger of combusting, bursting into flames and waking up nothing but a pile of ash on this bed that I'm turning into a nest.

Terror? Yes, I think that expresses my fear when my Fierce Self draws a line in the sand and dares me to defy it. I've dawdled too long. I dare not defy my Fierce Self that has run out of patience. I feel as if I am in danger of having fat carved off me wholesale if I do not get busy whittling with this LC/Atkins plan.

I *know* LC/Atkins works. But - like most programs - it works if you work it.

'Nuf said.
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/409.8/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)
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Almost 5am on Sunday morn in SoCal. Still dark outside but sparkly inside me as my tummy revels in 40g of protein from a hot slosh fueling cells inside me. Yummers!

Where IS everybody? Still snoozing? Or up and busy with family biz, church and other good stuff that is just not a part of my life these days, alas, as I am taking time out to figure who I am and to redesign this body that I've been hiding out in for 35yrs or so.

Yep, I'm COMING OUT. My wings are almost ready to flap and unfurl and display as I prepare to start living. What? At 64? Well, there are late bloomers and then there are VERY LATE BLOOMERS like me who procrastinate and who have to make the most of what 'happens' in their life. What is happening for me today is another day of mindful eating and artful dodging of casual carbs lying around this abode full of slim folk who are not bothered by the things that invite me to destroy my best-laid plans.

What lies ahead of me today? I know there are 3HB eggs in the fridge for snax and some mayo if I want to make eggy-mayo salad (yum) for a treat. Always have tins of sardines on hand, for a fast fishy jolt of protein, just in case of a fit of craving.

One never knows when such a fit will fall on one.

Oh, maybe it's time for a nap. Maybe I can grab some zzz as I wait for the rest of you to check in. Got to grab my zzz in short naps, as this hinky hip aches me awake. Been sleeping in spurts and starts since Aug.2006, to get as much sleep as anyone can who does not get a straight eight hours. Sigh. Insomnia? No, just a painful hip/groin pain or strain that acts up in spasms. Never have a problem falling asleep. Can nap like a cat. Just wake in pain after a half hour or so, to sit up, relieve the ache, snooze sitting up, then lie back down to see if I can catch some more zzz before the hip spasms again.

Kvetching? Whingeing? Yeah, just a bit. Actually it's funny how often I am discovering that I'd rather sleep than eat. I miss some meals because I get sleepy and realize I have a chance to slip off to sleep - so seductive - rather than get up and go to a meal. How funny is that, that I'd rather sleep than eat? But that's something I've discovered in the past 1.75yrs. Amazes me.

Um...okay, that's about it for my early-Sunday natter. Have a g'day! Unless you've made Other Planz, of course *snort* and are willing to risk living dangerously. What say?
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/409.8/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)
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Good deal, Zer! You're getting very close to Threedom. Sometimes it takes getting fed up with ourselves to really get moving in the right direction!

Getting fed up with dawdling, with losing the same pounds and ounces over and over, with seeing years pass, opportunities lost? Maybe that's it. Or maybe I'm just now getting clarity on which of my goals is primary to achieving ALL my goals. Could be that I now see that health through LC living is the ONLY path to achieving any of the MANY goals I hope to gain.

I've been watching "Adaptation" over and over to absorb all the subtleties delivered in that complicated film. Love it!

Nicholas Cage plays chubby balding twins, a mind-boggling pair of roles for a hunky man to manage. One twin is uncertain about everything, the other is a devil-may-care guy who dares things and succeeds as he philosophizes that we are who we love, not who loves us.

That philosophy elevates him above those who ridicule him or reject him. Isn't that a great philosophy? I think it's radical and can change a life that is occasionally rocked by rejection and self-doubt, as my life is when I'm unsure of my worth as a human being. Eating to stuff feelings is no longer an option, so I have to find other coping skills now.

Maybe I'll adapt. Maybe I'll adopt that philosophy: WE ARE WHO WE LOVE, NOT WHO LOVES US. Sure feels good, as I slip it on for size...for sighs! Add it to my growing list of mantras that lift my spirit when I need a lift. Mantras work!

Just had a horrible hour...despair...what's the use...all that...

Woke up from a nap (always napping, trying to catch up on sleep that I do not get at night as my hip spasms and aches me) and my mood was BLACK as pitch and full of despair at myself. What's the use? Why not just go eat eat EAT? It was horrible, feeling as if I might lose the awful feeling by eating cereal+milk. Total despair about my life, my future, my prospects as a 64yr-old person adrift on an unknown sea and not in very good physical condition. Definitely gloomy.

I sat with the feeling. Maybe that's a benefit of being lethargic, of having pain when I struggle to my feet. I delay getting up from this bed. This time it did a good job for me, as I did not even get up to refill my water bottles. I'm thirsty and I know that I must push water to catch up with a slow-drinking day today.

But I sat with my feelings and just FELT the despair and sadness inside me.

Reviewed all the deadend relationships that I've said good-bye to lately as I try to draw boundaries and protect myself from a bad habit of going to a dry well for support that cannot possibly come from someone who feels alien from me.

I just sat with my feelings. Did not munch pumpkin seeds. Did not eat at all.

Took about an hour for me to work all the way through the gloomy feelings.

How about that? After an hour of sitting with my feelings of being hopeless and having a dim future - or no future at all - I no longer feel sad about my minimal weight loss today, about my lack of network/friends/supporters in my so-called 'real' life. I'm almost back to my Aspie upness, a characteristic of Asperger's that I love!

Feeling sad and bummed out is no fun.

No wonder I ate to avoid it, all my life, and was willing to weigh 400# or more for more than half my life as a penalty for stuffing my feelings down with milk and carby stuff in crinkly pkg or boxes. I think I'm past that now, as I learn about fueling my body and my brain. Thanks, LCFriends, for giving me an alternative to eating as a remedy for scary sad feelings of inadequacy.
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/409.6/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)
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Hi Zer,
I just wanted to stop by and say Hello. I used to read your post on another forum and recently saw your post here. I'm glad to see that you are doing well on your plan. I'm sorry you're feeling a little low. But I think you have a healthy attitude about just embracing what you feel and dealing with it. We all have those feelings at some point in our lives, it's how we deal with our feelings that make the big difference, good or bad.
I hope you have continued success and am looking forward to being inspired from you're post once again!
~Bella~

Bella, thanks for posting and for your feedback on my posts. I got shot down on that other forum, banned for life, I gather. It was an awkward time for me, mid-Dec2007. But I do like how this LCFriends forum works and I have benefited from the shift to a forum that offers amazing support. Mostly I am at 300+ thread that our fearless leader Deb renews each month. Watch for our May thread!

Funny thing about the recent Black Dog gloom (as Winston Churchill alluded to his dark moments) was that I felt it was a permanent and terminal thing - for the hour or so that it lasted. That's different from my dips into Eeyore-ish gloom, explorations of a Slough of Despond in which I nibble at the thistles that prick me in life. This was different. Awfuller. Sure don't want to go THERE very often. Makes me realize that I know very little about Depression with a big-D! All I have experienced is very mild and Eeyorish - and temporary in its discombobulation of my daily life. It can be snoozed away or written away. This Black Dog gloom was scary!

Part of the recovery process is certainly weeding out the bad info and pulling the good info into our conscious choices for a LC menu and a LC lifestyle. This is not a diet, right? It's for life, for health, for a better future in an uncertain world. Here are some pointers from the Weston A. Price foundation.

Part of my recovery process is to examine my own bias against fat folks. I occasionally have been aware of how I am abused for being fat, expected to settle for less, to be a doormat for others. That's rough. Worse is what I have done to my own self as a penalty for being fat in a thin world. Kind of interesting to take a look at my own bias against fat folks - including my own weight as a factor in how I rate a person as a success or failure in life.

I worked and was hired repeatedly at a ghastly weight of 400# or so, give or take, and was often treated well - as an asset to a boss or a company that made use of my ability to accomplish work in an efficient manner. I also experienced harsh and unfair treatment that was directly related to how people view fat folks, as being not-quite-bright and as being useful but not worth paying or promoting. Harsh.

When I had the courage to question being passed over as promotions were given to younger and less-dedicated (and often slimmer and leggier and younger) workers, I was regarded with amazement by even kind-hearted folk. Somehow I was expected to be grateful for any job, for any grunt work, for any tolerance of my presence to train - or to do the actual work for - those who were hired to be promoted to rungs of the ladder that I was told frankly I was not even on. Yes, I've been told to my face that I was not eligible for promotion, that people who joined up and who spent time being trained by me were more suitable (actually dressed for success in suits while I wore my dumpy dresses that I sewed myself) for a corporate ladder.

I was once "promoted" to a salaried position that paid less than what I had made the prior year when I was paid overtime - and when I protested the "promotion" to more responsibility at less pay than a prior year I was scolded for daring to question the "promotion". So I signed a document and was told that I was now an ASSISTANT but that I was not ever going to be promoted to my boss's position. Imagine saying that to anyone, if you can! Imagine saying YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE TO BE PROMOTED FROM ASSISTANT to anyone being offered less money to do more work! Worse yet, imagine my lack of self-esteem in agreeing to that "promotion" - as I did. I worked that job for a year, figuring I was gaining experience in hiring freelancers and learning how to juggle more tasks than I'd done before - and I did it for considerably less money, as a salaried person is not paid for working the overtime hours that I still put in. I had all my prior work PLUS a few added tasks given to me to justify calling my "promotion" a promotion.

Horrible, what an obese person will do - to herself - to keep earning money.

Do I need to do some formal grief work? I sometimes wonder if I'm grieving the loss of a "relationship" with food/carbs, after turning to carbs for comfort for so many years. In time, I know that I'll be GLAD that I have found other comforts, other more healthy relationships, but for now I miss the old familiar comfort - so like holding on to a bad relationship for fear that the absence of even a bad relationship will be unbearable.

Maybe I need to do a formal grieving processing, to move myself through the stages of grief: Is this too absurd for words? Or am I facing loss that is the emotional equivalent (on an immature level, to be sure) to losing an important part of my life, my universe? I wonder. What do you think?
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/403.4/199
WOE: Atkins+ALG; BMR:2423cals; 182gProtein; 128ozWater
432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8) 402.4(5/8)
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Are you just missing the carbs or are you actually feeling loss for not having them to turn to? Or actually grieving what the pains and losses the food is supposed to sooth? I know very well that I can self medicate with the carbs and, temporarily at least, keep my feelings of inadequacy and loneliness locked away. Similar to burying myself alive. Is this what you mean?