A Good Day, Butt....

Finally a good day.
All the methylation supplements are now detoxed out of my system.
I've cut back to bare essential supplements until I figure out what I should be taking.
I've discovered melatonin to help me fall asleep and I only need a tiny amount of it.
I had my biweekly glutathione IV yesterday.

I'm full of pep today.  I went to the supermarket with the kid today.  Then I actually managed to put piles of stuff away!  You can actually see the top of my dining room table for the first time in six months!  Woohoo!!  Major victory!

Basically I'm regrouping.  I've had enough of obsessing about diet.  I'm on the right track with it.  My guts are slowly healing.  I've collected way more recipes than I'll ever make this coming year considering I can only cook a few times a week.  Plus I'm not loosing any weight.  Here comes the butt...  (hehehe)(I love puns)

Blerg!  All this chatter on the Paleo boards that you don't have to pay attention to what you eat since you are eating healthy and the pounds will just melt off.  It's a crock.  Or it only happens with men.  Yup.  It is a known fact that it is easier for men to loose weight than women.  They have all the luck.  Generally they have a faster metabolism.  Plus we need a certain amount of fat to bear children (whether we choose to or not is another issue) which means our bodies want to hang on to the stuff for dear life.  Mine is no different.  I have lots of fat around my middle.  Yup.  The worst place to have it.  And it doesn't want to leave me.  It must like my company, after all, I AM pretty interesting.

I have been various degrees of overweight since puberty.  That is just shy of 40 years.  The thing I've discovered with my body is that it needs exercise to shed fat (not necessarily weight).  And here I am sitting around virtually everyday.  I've put on 40 pounds since becoming sick two years ago.  God knows how much muscle mass I've lost.  I shudder to think.  Initially, I lost ten pounds due to a combination of not being able to eat and loss of muscle mass.  Thankfully, I've slowed down with the weight gain.  I thought I had leveled off last fall but being stuck in bed for the first three months of this year and slowly rebounding from said crash has lead to a slow but steady increase in weight.  I'm beginning to feel like Jabba the Hut.  I'm buying clothes in a 3x!!  Ugh!!  I have never EVER been this big.  Even my fat clothes don't fit anymore.  I try not to worry about it but some days it bugs me.  I'm going to be one of those fat ladies that gets their fat ass filmed as I'm being wheeled around the supermarket and posted on YouTube for people to laugh at.  It is humiliating.

Here I am doing this major diet overhaul.  I'm eating minuscule amounts of sugar and very few starches.  I'm eating better than I ever have and I'm getting bigger.  ARGH!!  I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing to switch my body over to fat burning from sugar burning but my fat doesn't want to cooperate.  It likes me too much to leave.

Part of it is that I like food.  I like eating.  And, damn it, I get hungry.  I read some of these blogs and wonder how the women are still standing.  "I ate a mango for breakfast."  Really?  I would be starving an hour later.  "I ate some carrot sticks and an apple for lunch."  My blood sugar would be on a roller coaster ride if I ate like that.  I would be rail thin and clawing my husbands eyes out due to lack of food.  I'm not fun to be around when my blood sugar tanks.  On top of being cranky (megabitch cranky mind you) I also get nauseous.  I feel like I'm going to throw up.  So eating fewer calories (apart from not working for the general population) isn't really an option for me.  For peet's sake I'm already not eating sweeteners except my once a week ice cream and a small amount of dark chocolate in the evening.  Weight is such a complicated thing.  If it were easy to loose weight, then everyone would be skinny.

Not being able to move bugs me on so many levels.  I liked being active.  I love swimming, weight lifting, aerobics, ice skating, hiking, bike riding, rollerblading, walking, yoga.  You get the idea.  It never mattered that I was big I was moving.  I liked moving.  Now I'm stuck.  Stuck in bed.  Stuck on the couch.  Stuck in the house.  It is an excellent day when I can circumnavigate the perimeter of my own yard and only happens a few times a year.  December was the last time I walked down my own street.  God this bugs the heck out of me!!

My doc even said to me that he didn't understand why I was so heavy and that was before I was sick.  I was in the gym or on the ice six days a week and eating low fat, low sugar.  Of course now I wonder what would happen if I could do that same routine with my new diet.  Would the pounds drop off??  Would I become skinny for the first time in my adult life??

I don't want to buy 4x clothes next year.  That is just plain scary.  What the hell!?!

I just have to be patient I guess.  I have to trust that the diet changes are helping.  After all I've had lots of good things come about due to the diet changes:

• My hormones are more balanced.
• My period has become regular for the first time in two years.
• I don't get the adrenaline spikes/crashes as badly or as often.
• My brain works better.  My head is more clear more often.
• I don't get my severe neuro symptoms as often.  They used to be a daily occurrence.  Now they only happen if I push way too hard.
• My heartburn is gone and I'm off all heartburn meds.
• My intestinal pain and cramping has stopped.
• My skin is more clear.  I only get zits after I eat wheat or corn.
• My teeth are whiter.
• I have less tartar on my teeth.
• My hands and feet don't swell up as often as they used to.
• I can now tolerate wheat when I cheat although I do get some late night heartburn afterwards as well as zits the next day.  I no longer get the horrible gut problems.
• I can digest beans more easily.
• My hands and feet aren't as cold as they used to be.
• I can tolerate heat better.
• I have days where I can read for short periods of time or even problem solve.  I managed to do a math problem in my head last night!!  Hallelujah!
• My libido has made a few guest appearances.  (It had run away for a while)
• Haven't had a single migraine.  Woohoo!!
• My cholesterol numbers have come down along with my blood pressure.
• I no longer get sunburns.
• I'm loosing my sweet tooth.
• I'm pooping regularly and with ease.  (yes I went there....hehehehe...but normal pooping isn't something that often happens with CFS particularly when the guts are involved with the illness)
• As long as I get enough sun and glutathione I see a slow and steady improvement in my energy levels.

So I guess I just need patience.  My body seems to be making repairs now that it has the right fuel. Things are getting better even if I'm getting fatter.  I'm in much better health than I was this time last year.  I'm not begging for pain meds from my doc.  I no longer need several prescription meds my doc had me on this time last year.   I'm mobile once in a while.  I'm getting out of the house a few times a week.  I'm going out to dinner and the movies again.  I snuggled with hubs the other night while watching X-Files!  Yay!!  Patience.  I must have patience and count my blessings that I'm not bedbound and there is improvement in my health.

As for the future.  This week I'm regrouping.  I'm going to go through my medical papers.  Get organized.  Figure out what supplements I should be taking (I can't remember what all the different docs have said to me over the last year.).  Figure out what I want to say to my doc and which blood tests I want done.  I haven't seen him in six months.  This is the longest I've gone without seeing him since I got sick.  I need a medical to do list.  Both for my own health issues but also to start prepping for the insurance battle that will happen this fall.  I want to give myself lots of lead time so I don't have to panic later or not be able to get stuff done because I'm crashed.  Lots to do.  Lots to do.  Worrying about my weight needs to be left off my list.  For now anyway....

"Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson