Since our last visit . . .

To see what happened to me since the last time I posted here, see my LiveJournal Blog, Suzy Bear's Wretched Mess.

I remember I stopped posting here when it became difficult to do so, but now the LJ software is giving this old computer fits so I may move over to here now. Blogger does seem to be working faster and offer more than LJ, that's for sure. Over the next week or so I'll work on fixing this place up a little better. I already removed the long lists of links off the side so it already looks a bit less cluttered.

I Drive My Husband Crazy, Too

I know nobody reads this blog - my counter service tells me so - but the few people who have managed to find this place over the years probably quickly run away as soon as they see the posts. They haven't changed much over the years - Dieting for weight loss versus size acceptance. The debate still rages today, but it's leaning more towards eating the healthier lower fat vegan foods and getting some fun exercise in than obsessing over the numbers on a scale.

We were recently "on vacation," in quotes because we're probably the first couple in NJ to have never gone away for any vacation in our 31 years of marriage, except for our 5 days in the Poconos for our honeymoon. Instead of going away we spend our money on such "luxuries" as a few extra goodies in the weekly grocery basket, or replacing broken or worn out/outdated items with more modern ones. This vacation we bought a few CD's (on sale) to replace those that was still had on vinyl (most from the 1960's) but were so worn and scratched we didn't dare play them any more for fear of ruining our 32 year old diamond needle on the turntable. We replaced the broken digital camera (only 2 years old) with a better Canon Powershot and broken Singer serger sewing machine (24 years old) with a newer Singer model. We bought 7th Heaven season one on DVD to replace the home-taped VHS version I had (the remaining seasons are in my Amazon shopping cart for future splurges). Now we can use those old tapes for the upcoming summer season of tv.

And we bought books, which brings me to the topic of this post. When the Amazon package arrived my husband had a good laugh at my expense. Included in the order was Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby's size-acceptance book Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere along with Kip Esselstyn's Engine 2 Diet which pushes the same very low fat, high starch strict vegetarian food plan as his parents and Dr. McDougall. Yeah, at first thought they are extreme opposites, but if you look back on this blog you'll see that the times I felt my best, physically and mentally, were the times I was following the vegan food plan and avoiding all dairy. My husband unpacked the box and just shook his head when he saw the titles and said "We're in for another bumpy ride, aren't we?"

During vacation we ate a lot of crap - fatty meats, bakery goodies nearly every day, as well as almost every lunch from a fast food restaurant, then a chocolate cream pie with three inches of whipped cream on top for the finale on Mother's day. My son and husband really don't like chocolate pudding so the pie was all mine, and I devoured the entire thing in 2 days. Yesterday was my first non-goodies day in a week and a half, and I was in agony! I could barely sleep, my snoring and snorting, as well as hip pains, kept waking me up every hour or so. My head was ready to split open, and when I described the pain to my son he said it sounded like his typical migraine headache. It was the worst headache of my life and didn't go away, even with three doses of extra strength Tylenol. Usually one regular strength tablet taken only once gets rid of any headache I get, but this one was a killer, and the first time I ever had eye pain to go along with it. I never want to go through that kind of pain ever again!

So, with that in mind, yesterday was day 1 of no sweets or any other crap foods. I know the dairy in those things is causing the sinus problems, and I know yesterday's headache was probably a sugar hangover. I'm now going to make a strong effort to avoid all things dairy, have only a little bit of sugar (In iced tea or lemonaide), and continue to make dinners the whole family enjoys, which will save not only my sanity but a few bucks at the grocery store, too. Most meals will be low fat vegan, but not all. I already made one of the soups in the Engine 2 book and see a lot more recipes I'll be trying, just as I'll be making a lot more McDougall recipes, but not only very low fat vegan ones. In fact, yesterday Isa's newest book, Vegan Brunch, went on sale and I ordered it.




Plans for today include hitting the park with my new camera, and finally opening the box with the serger. All my fabric is washed and ready to go, and I've got a lot of sewing to catch up on. Once this headache is gone and I catch up on housework, the first thing to get made is a new Lazy Girls purse. I've had the patterns and fabric for over a year now and really should get started on them again. After that I have a few aprons to make up (Again, the fabric has been waiting about a year), and last week I bought more fabric for summer caftan shirts. I'm so glad I found her directions again after she moved them. I've been using them for almost 10 years now and just LOVE how those shirts feel and fit. I even wear them during the cold wintry days, layered with other shirts. They're best in the wildest fabric designs possible. For this year's batch I have a tropical print (Parrots!), ladybugs, multi-colored sprinkles (known as "jimmies" to some parts of the country), subdued beige butterflies, and my favorite (and the most expensive piece), Japanese fans. My apron and purse fabrics are wilder than these, so I really can't wait to get started. Hopefully now that I'm away from dairy again my arthritis and neck neuritis won't act up as much and allow me to work at the machines for more than a few minutes at a time without pain.

Expect photos. :)

And I Thought Only Magazines Did This

Our local newspaper had these two articles practically side by side:

Eating fatty foods may boost your memory, say scientists

15 fat-burning foods

You may have to enable Javascript or Java or lower security settings to see past page 1 of the article. In Firefox with AdBlock Plus I had to disable AdBlock on this page to go forward.

Of the 15 items in the article, three were hot peppers, 2 were caffeinated drinks, and 6 were meats. How are these things - especially the fatty meats - supposed to burn fat??

To quote John Cleese: "This is all much too silly!"

Great Winnie the Pooh Comic Strip

This is how I feel about dieting - I've been trying my whole life to "be like other (thin) people and have failed.

Here We Go Again

In the past month I've sampled 4 different weight loss plans. My weight had gone down a few pounds AND up a few plus one on each plan. I've eaten as low as 600 calories in one day and as high as 2000 calories, both my daily requirement for the plan I was on at the time. Yes, I gained weight on 600 calories a day. I'm ending March 2 pounds heavier than I started it.

I keep promising myself I'm going to put a stop to this insanity.

Again.

So this morning I unpacked my Overeaters Anonymous literature again and spent my laundromat reading time looking over old Lifelines. OA may not be perfect, but it's the best thing I can think of right now.

Although I said I was going back to strict McDougall, it was more like 50-50 instead of my usual 90-10, and my body is paying for it with all kinds of aches and pains, blood sugar dips, brain fog out the wazoo, and now my blood pressure is higher than it ever was. I had a nice McDougall soup for dinner last night and every 2 hours had to get up to hit the bathroom. At 3:30am it hit again and I rolled over and stood up and WHOA!

The room started spinning!


I immediately sat back down and started to panic, even though this has happened to me in the past, and thanks to my very sensitive inner ears, will happen again in the future. But at the time, the tailspin of panic sent my blood pressure soaring to 210/104, stroke levels. I eventually calmed myself down enough to go to the bathroom (or else I would pee in my pants and panic me even more) and got back to bed, but by then sleep was out of the question. By 4:30am the dizziness was completely gone, my pulse rate was back to normal, and my chest no longer felt as if were going to burst open from the force of my heart beat. It was at this time I got out of bed and checked my blood pressure and got that reading - who knows how high it was back when my head was spinning?! I've been checking it every hour as the morning goes on and the last reading was back to my normal of around 140/70. Whew!

But what, besides rising too fast, caused the BP to go - and stay - that high? My money is on yesterday's bad food choices, as there were more bad than good ones. For breakfast I finished off the hash brown patties that were in the freezer. That was 6 patties. With about a half cup of ketchup, and not a lower sodium variety, either. Lunch was a balogna and cheese sandwich, and not a lower sodium version of the lunch meat. Dinner was a little something called Paul's 2-Cup Soup from a post on the official McDougall forums that I made with no salt added tomatoes and salt-free broth, thank goodness. But to go with the soup I made a loaf of white flour potato bread that got not just buttermilk powder in it but 4 teaspoons of butter. And because veggie soup and white bread digests fast, when I was hungry again a few hours later I had myself a banana with peanut butter.

Now, why is my blood pressure sky high? Do I really need to ask that question?

Breakfast today was my old-faithful oatmeal & raisins with some brown sugar mixed in. Lunch will be veggies, rice and garbanzo beans with some McDougall Right Foods pea soup poured over the top. Dinner is going to be a McDougallized version of Nava Atlas' Pasta Twists with Cauliflower and Spinach, using California Blend frozen veggies (cauli, broccoli and carrots) instead of the plain cauliflower, and no spinach, mainly because I was positive I bought spinach but the freezer ate it sometimes between Saturday and today. My son was happy about that because he really doesn't like spinach all that much. And if I want a snack tonight, well, I'm thinking of making another banana bread. Maybe this time my husband will leave enough so we can have it more than twice.

I keep saying I have to treat my food plan as if it were medically prescribed, like my thyroid and asthma meds. It's the only way it'll sink in to this swollen throbbing brain.

I need to make healthier food choices. This sinus infection is because of all the dairy I've been eating lately, and although I know dairy does this, it tastes so good and is so addicting I can't help but eat it. It's got to stop.

And my blood pressure is going up again from all the meat and salt I've been using. Again, I know these things affect me this way, so why did "God lead me" to these foods? Is it as I wrote in an earlier post, that my God is the mean and vindictive one? Must be.

I'm taking back my will and going back on a mostly McDougall food plan. If I keep eating the "God directed way" I'll die of a heart attack before Easter.

The Thin Within book calls this decision "Phase 2." I call it a return to sanity, that it wasn't God but the devil that drove me away from my former healthy eating habits and into the world of unhealthy meats and fatty foods again.