A is for ....

A is for Award. And this one was given to me by the lovely Paula Rodriguez at paulawannacracker. Hurray!!! (And I finally learnt how to link! )

Paula is looking great after losing 30lbs so far and working hard on improving her eating at the moment. Her's is an honest blog - trying to be careful with what you eat is not easy, especially with a large family to entertain. I think Paula is often too hard on herself because she's actually doing an amazing job. Cheer her on if you're not already.

A is for Appreciation. If you appreciate great writing then you will love Green Stone Woman's new Writing Blog. Her writing is quite exceptional. Check out "Rituals" posted on Oct 28th. Paragraphs 3 and 4 particularly put me in mind of Ted Hughes' "Lovesong". See what you think. She has also set up a new Art Blog where you seriously want to check out those sculptures. My favourite is Bog Woman, but The Frog is pretty amazing too. Of course Nora continues to write her daily journaling blog too. In her post this morning, her wish was that people would follow her new writing blog, so let's wave the magic wand and make her wish come true.

A is also for Anger and Appropriate. As in, Is anger an appropriate response to someone else's pain? I have read several bloggers writing about the anger they feel when someone else is depressed. Especially if the pain is so severe the person actually feels suicidal. Apparently a suicidal person is particularly deserving of these people's anger and disgust. Yes, the word disgust has been used in this context. One blogger actually wrote that she was "offended" by other people's pain. Offended???? WTF??? And these people call themselves Christians?

Can anger and disgust ever be appropriate responses to other people's pain?

For example, if you are very overweight you have possibly at some time been on the receiving end of someone else's anger over this issue. It may have been your parents, your partner, even a complete stranger in the street. Did you find this remotely appropriate? Remotely helpful? Chances are you found someone else's anger directed at you a crushing experience. At the very least it's highly unpleasant that someone else seeks to increase your pain over this issue. Why would they do that? Does it make sense? Does it achieve anything?

Why do some people feel intense anger when someone says openly that they are depressed? Or suicidal? What does that anger signify? There could be various factors at play here, but the most obvious candidate is denial. Denial of their own pain. To some people, admitting that they have such negative emotions is too frightening for them. They want to stuff those feelings down. Pretend they don't exist. Those feelings are linked with feelings of their own inadequacy and lack of self esteem. Some people prefer to block this stuff out of their mind. It gives them a feeling of superiority, after all, that they have been able to "overcome" (supposedly) the causes of their pain, and not "give in" to those feelings.

Why do overweight people in particular often bear the brunt of other people's inappropriate anger? Well, as we know, excess weight is often pain made highly visible. Unlike alcoholism, or drug taking for example, which are not immediately apparent when the person walks down the street, the compulsive eater's pain is there for all the world to see at all times.

So people are trying to distance themselves from their own pain when they look down on someone else who is obviously in pain. And an inadequate ego will always get a boost from feeling superior to other people of course.

I remember when I did a creative therapy class some years ago, and before the first session when we were all in the reception area waiting to go in, a woman in the group proclaimed very loudly that "People think that to come here there must be something wrong with you". And she went on to explain (to her highly embarrassed listener) that there was nothing wrong with her. Of course not. Like she was just there for the craic.

Fact is that everyone attending that group had been diagnosed with depression.

She told me in no uncertain terms that she was not depressed. And evidently felt that because of this she was rather superior to the rest of us. She was not mentally ill. She was not one of us. She then proceeded to paint a very large piece of paper entirely in very dark grey and black. Yeah, I thought, you're so not depressed.

Being British, no-one in the group mentioned it. Every time this poor deluded woman dropped another clanger (supposedly demonstrating her own psychological superiority to the rest of us) there was much raising of eye brows, shaking of heads and knowing smiles exchanged.

Thing is, this woman was the most depressed person in the group by a very long chalk. Her desperate attempts to bolster her own flagging ego only signalled the enormous hole she was in emotionally.

For the other members of the group, treating this woman as a figure of fun (in their own heads) served to stop them (to some extent) being hurt from the message that this woman was transmitting ie you are worth less as a human being if you are depressed, if you suffer from mental illness, if you are in psychological pain. We tried to insulate ourselves from her opinion that we were unacceptable and weak; less than "normal" people. We tried not to allow her to increase our pain.

This woman's feelings of disgust towards herself could have had a very destructive effect on other people. And possibly did in other situations.

Her unfortunate, hurtful behaviour towards us was really to do with her feelings about herself. Ie feeling that she was worthless, unacceptable and "less than" other people.

Appropriate responses to other people's pain are things like empathy, offering comfort, understanding, making suggestions to ease the situation, telling a story from your own experience of how you dealt with something similar, or simply listening (or reading).

Inappropriate responses are anger, disgust, feelings of superiority. These responses say a lot about the person feeling them and zip all about the person they are aimed at.

OK. I finished ranting now. Me, angry??!! That would be so inappropriate ....


In other news, The Bear has been suddenly demanding my attention after virtually no contact for quite a while. I have seen him every day the last three days. And we have had a lovely walk each evening. I also went on a walk on Monday evening on my own.

I was surprised that he was in quite good shape psychologically despite a bit of a crisis - which required my help and support. I really have loved spending a bit of time with him. Spending time with him helps me be more accepting of myself, because he accepts me totally and unconditionally. He is the only person in the real world I trust (I say in the real world because obviously I trust you lot).

My eating - rubbish. All rubbish. Massive eating every day. But at least my exercise levels have improved. And that is really necessary considering I will be walking a very large steep hill to see my healer on Monday.

I am feeling a little better in myself. Your comments have been very supportive and helpful. Between you lot and The Bear and my healer, I hope to crawl out into the light any time soon ...

Thank you.

More rubbish

This is difficult to write. I am making myself post tonight even though I really don't want to. But when you're blogging you have to keep going. I feel bad if I don't post!
And I feel I haven't been posting half enough. I must get myself into the discipline of posting most days even when I don't feel up to doing anything. In my defence I will say that I spend quite a lot of time commenting on other people's blogs.

I haven't been making myself do very much for most of this week. Tuesday was a bad stressful day. It started with hardly any sleep followed by a lot of itching on waking as the stress hormones were raging. I had to take an anithistamine asap. I find myself being very reactive these days. Much more than I used to be. Quite small things set me off.

After having porridge, I got out early and walked along the river to get to the other side to go to the health shop for the stuff I need to dye my hair. I have needed to get this stuff for weeks - I have well over an inch of grey roots showing. The walk along the river itself was quite nice. But after I'd been to said shop and called in at Boots I started to feel really unwell. A combination of lack of sleep, my nerves, and the tiredness brought on by antihistamines. I had to sit down on a bench for a while.

I walked back along the river and went home and did my laundry. I didn't even manage to feel good about myself for having done that walk.

On Wednesday and Thursday I did nothing. Nothing except eat too much - low fat carbs, fruit, milk, low cal yoghurt, low cal sandwiches.

It's like I've given up on myself really. That my life has reduced to sitting in this chair in front of the TV while surfing on my laptop or eating. I have hardly done anything else in weeks and weeks.

Part of me thinks "Why bother?" Why bother trying anymore? My life is going to be rubbish whatever I do. I might as well just sit here until I die.

Another part of me thinks "How can I break out of this?" Maybe I could do an adult education class? I could do an art class now as my hands are much better at the moment - such a class has been an impossibility for most of the last 3 years while my hands have been so bad. Of course, I don't know how long my hands will stay good, so I should grab the chance while I can. But do I have the confidence to face all those people? My appearance is so dreadful it saps all my confidence.

Maybe I should try Overeaters Anonymous. As posted previously, I've always been too scared to talk about my food issues. But since writing this blog and reading other people's struggles, I do feel I might be able to do this now. Perhaps, in itself, this is a significant step forward.

I think with a huge amount of effort I could get myself out walking and I could deny myself food and therefore lose some weight. But I will relapse again. I will go through all the pain of going without food for a while only to relapse at some stage in the future. It always happens.

My life is just going round in circles.

I have been suicidal at times this week. I read Vicarious Therapy's (see blog list) post about thinking she is just an afterthought with her family. Hell, at least she has family members to talk to on the phone. I really am alone in this life. No-one would even notice if I didn't wake up tomorrow morning. I only hear intermittently - about every two weeks (sometimes much longer) - from The Bear. And usually it is only when he needs something from me, ie a phone call making, or advice for his girlfriend etc. It hurts that he is only really using me. But I have no right, of course, to complain. I am lucky to still have any contact with him. Without him, dear reader, I would be dead right now.

It's not that I want to be with him, because I don't, but I would like him to be able to consider me sometimes, and to be able to see beyond his own needs sometimes. The fact that he can't do this is why I split up with him. So it's a bit ridiculous to expect anymore from him as a friend. And I do prefer him as a friend - he was such hard work as a boyfriend!

I just wish there was someone in my life who would actually care about me. But this isn't about having a boyfriend. What I wish for is the thing I can never have ie family members who care about me, not a sexual relationship. I wouldn't be upset never to have sex again. I've had to have sex far too many times in previous relationships when I didn't want it to be bothered with that ever again. Sex just isn't on my agenda.

If you don't have family then there is nothing you can ever do about it. It's the thing I can never get over. There's no sustitute for having family members who are a) alive and b) want to have contact with you and care about you.

So this is the unsolvable problem.

Slightly better, sadly no will power involved

Hi Guys. Thank you to those fellow bloggers who left messages of support after the last post. Your support means the whole world to me.

Just seen a brilliant ad on TV where a woman is getting a quote from a plumber (with a bad case of workman's bum!) and before he delivers the catastrophic news ie how much it's going to cost, an airbag inflates from her stomach to cushion her against the blow! And my only thought on watching this was that I have a built in airbag on me at the moment in the shape of my swollen stomach. There's a whole load of stuff in there about people using fat as a defence against the world ...

Anyway, as it says in the title, things are slightly better. I am eating a more moderate amount of food. But sadly this has nothing to do with will power or strength or resolve of any kind, and everything to do with me feeling really ill since Friday. On Friday morning I got up feeling very hungry - probably as a result of the sudden exertion on Thursday ie being out for a few hours - and so I ate a lot, a mountain of food for "breakfast", and felt incredibly ill afterwards for the rest of the day. And since then I have simply been unable to eat to excess again due to feeling so ill and having quite a bit of stomach pain.

I'd so like to say it was a conscious decision, that I was at last making sensible choices, better choices etc. But that is not the case. I am just being physically prevented from binge eating at the moment. It makes me think a lot of Lisa's decision (see Less of Lisa on blog list) to consider going for a gastric band.

What you eat, when you eat, how much you eat is all about habit. Once you are in a good habit it's quite easy to keep going - unless something upsets the apple cart of course (which is what always happens to me) - but if life gives me an even chance, with nothing too stressful going on I can keep it up. In fact I actually enjoy the challenge of having boxes to tick every day and getting into bed at the end of the day and being able to tick all those boxes. It gives you a sense of achievement. Even when I cry every step of a walk due to the pain of my psoriasis - and I've done plenty of that earlier this year - I can enjoy the immense satisfaction afterwards that I've actually done it.

So the problem isn't doing it, but getting into it in the first place. Getting into the habit of eating much less and moving far more - getting to that place is very difficult. Because every aspect of your being is set up to expect large amounts of food and/or calorie dense foods, both physically and psychologically. To overturn all those expectations is really hard work, igoring your body's constant demands for food, and doing exercise which (at first) as you're doing it just makes you feel really bad physically, requires an iron will. If you are not in a place of any psychological strength at the start then it can become insurmountable.

As you may have guessed, dear reader, I am not in a place of any psychological strength right now. Therefore the facility of willpower is not readily available to me.

So my body is, for once, giving me a helping hand in making me too ill to eat too much in one go.

Tough weekend

Today my mood is totally different to my jubilation on Friday. It has been a tough weekend. I feel like what happened on Friday was almost supernatural. Like not me at all. That I was very guided to doing what I did. I'm sure I felt so good because I was sent a lot of healing that day. The people who give the healing are so good to me. Someone always send me healing on Friday morning to help me get there. And on the rare occasions when I don't turn up they always send me plenty of healing.

It was a brilliant day, both for eating, being able to ignore my hunger and feel OK about it, and for the fact that I now have a totally useable, ultra clean fridge and freezer!

But obviously eating so eating much less for one day was bound to have a knock on effect. The carb monster has been on me ever since then. I tried to hold off but I couldn't. I was back to the 6 bowls of Readybrek on Saturday.

Friday made me realise how much this thing is in my head. That when I'm in the right place in my head I can control my eating - ignoring my hunger, making good decisions, and using tablets to help control cravings if necessary. Chris said something very insightful in her Thurs comment - that my agoraphobia is probably so bad because I am trying to tackle my eating problems. I think this is true. I'm seeing how much I have been "self medicating" with food; eating to cover my depression and anxiety.

When I'm in bingeing mode, every time I feel bad, I eat to feel better. Feeling bad emotionally is the prompt that tells me it's time to eat. I treat that feeling as though it's hunger. And this pattern is so difficult to get out of. Because when I feel bad I have no response to that if I'm not using food as my way of dealing with it. Hence I have been crying and feeling down and depressed the last couple of days. Grimness.

I have on previous occasions been through this pain when "coming off food", and it involves lots and lots of crying. I suppose, as with all addictions, this is a withdrawal effect. It seems to be especially bad in the first 2 weeks, and up to 4 weeks after "giving up" food. This tells me that it doesn't go on forever. It is only a few weeks. But I don't think I can deal with it at the moment. It's too much.

I've considered if I should try taking anti-depressants (ADs) so that I am dealing with the depression that way. But this would be a difficult path for many reasons. Firstly that ADs take 2-4 weeks to get working so I would have had to start them a while ago. If I had fully cottoned on to what was going on here, I could have looked at that way of dealing with it. But I wasn't so clearly aware as I am now. The awareness has come from writing all this down. I have never written or spoken about this stuff before hardly at all. Let alone just letting it all hang out here!

I could've spoken or written about it before but I've always been scared to do that because when I've attempted it, it's only made the problem worse. Just as adverts for food, recipes or articles in magazines, seeing people eat on TV etc can set me off bingeing, then talking about it always seemed to be an immediate trigger. It brought it to the front of my mind, like full on danger, red light flashing, total terror. So I shutdown that possibility. I couldn't cope with it. It was just too dangerous to talk about.

I'm not saying I could talk about it now - I don't know at the moment. But writing about it and even more importantly, reading other people's experiences, has really started to get all this in perspective for me. Provided a safe way for me to think about it. In fact I've thought about very little else recently.

So this is the power of blogging!!!

It's not just the reading, but also the suggestions make me think about why for example I can't buy my shopping over the internet and get it delivered as Chris suggested. I have, of course, sometimes thought about this. But now I really have to think about it because I want to give a response back when someone has taken time to think about my situation and make suggestions and write a comment. Whereas when it's just in my head, I can let it go. When I am not accountable to anyone else - (and lots of people have written about setting up a weight loss blog to be accountable) - then those thoughts can just be left, can drift away. But now I have to think, "Why can't I allow myself to have some shopping delivered?" Is it because that would be making things too easy for myself? Is it just because I haven't done it before? Is it because the cost of about 5 pounds to have it delivered seems ridiculous when there are shops just round the corner? Or is it because I'm not worth the 5 pounds? I'll let you know when I work it out.

Back to the issue of ADs. I have tried them before but the side effects were always really bad. I couldn't tolerate any SSRIs - like prozac or citalopram. I was on the tricyclic AD Lofepramine for 3 1/2 yrs but gave it up end 2005 as the side effects became too overwhelming. Tricyclic ADs are very toxic. The strain on my kidneys (which took 6 months to return to normal after stopping them), the low blood pressure coupled with low blood sugar totally ground me down the whole time. My hair went prematurely grey because of those tablets (kidney function problems). So in the end I didn't have much choice. Also tricylclics cause weight gain. I was my highest ever weight on Lofepramine. So not what I want in that respect either.

I am taking 5-HTP tablets at the moment - one a day last week and now I've started taking 2 a day. It's a nutritional supplement which is converted by the body into serotonin - the neurotransmitter that ADs seek to potentialise. Works much quicker than ADs - you feel the effects from the second day. When I stop taking it I will cry for a day or two. But the withdrawal is no longer than that, so much better than ADs. And there are no physical side effects. It's gently supportive and makes you care a lot less about things. But it doesn't of course make you feel happy. I'm going to keep on with it even though it doesn't offer anything near total protection from the overwhelming crushing pain of food withdrawal. But I have only stepped up the dose on Friday evening and maybe it would be worse than it has been without it. I've known days in this situation that were much much much worse than yesterday or today. This, in comparison, is low level pain, like an ache that's always there with regular but fairly brief periods of crying and piercing pain. Not full on curled up in an armchair with my head in my hands crying and crying and crying all day every day. So maybe it is working as much as it can. Maybe I should step up to 3 tablets a day? I am worried about the withdrawal from that of taking so much, but I would have to reduce one tablet at a time. Just as if I was coming off ADs. More important to stamp on this eating thing now than worry about that.

I am also taking rhodiola, a herbal supplement. Said to help make serotonin and dopamine (neurotransmitters) more available in the brain so making you feel better. I thought it would go well with the 5-HTP. It is also said to help with recovery from physical exertion - I've been taking it for the last couple of weeks now and maybe this is the reason why I have suffered no physical problems when I have had a sudden, unusual level of exercise ie comparatively long period of time walking. Problems like swelling of knees, aching of muscles in legs and bottom, aching knees or joints anywhere. I found this really surprising.

The above is what I knew when I started taking it. But I've just read how this herb also has an effect on opioid peptides. I mentioned in my first ever post how eating fatty/ sugary foods creates opioids in areas of the brain linked to this behaviour (see link to research in that post). So maybe this might offer some support there too. Rhodiola is an "adaptogen" which helps both mind and body deal with stress and return to normal functioning. It has also been implicated in helping prevent weight gain due to stress - but the experiments involve rats not humans! Still, I'm hoping it will help.

Jonathan Cainer says for Monday, "Better a little bearable pain today than a lot of regret tomorrow". Sadly the pain isn't little or bearable. But in taking these tablets I suppose I'm trying to make it less painful than it otherwise might be.

I still don't know if I can put myself through all this... But I don't think there's an alternative.

Ok. So I have now discovered what so many of you know already - blogging and reading blogs is addictive! I'm totally addicted. I'm even getting that "rush" that all addicts get when they are about to *indulge*.

I have read so many good things today. So many brave people out there who are willing to tell the truth about the difficult things going on in their lives. Things which I have thought about, or issues which have real meaning for me, but which I would have shied away from writing about myself. It's amazing the sense of relief that comes from realising "I'm not the only one", and from thinking "me too"... That there are so many people out there battling similar problems and not giving up. I just feel so grateful for all this.

Reading JackSh*t (see blog list) today made me think about how I got into my current bingeing hole. Through April, May and June of this year I worked so hard getting myself back onto the straight and narrow. And God it was hard. I spent most of April getting my food intake down - first to a reasonable level (I won't say normal because I don't even know what that is anymore), then by May my intake was at a level where I could actually lose some weight, and I kept going religously from May through to early July not stepping out of line on the eating front one single time. I thought I had it cracked! Ha ha.

And for three solid months I also exercised at least three times a week, often more than that, walking for at least an hour and a half each time. And this was no mean feat because I was in pain all the time. My psoriasis at that time was only on my hands and feet, but these are the most painful places to have it. One of my feet was so bad I was usually limping for the whole walk. I started to call myself "ol' hop along". Many times I was crying and telling myself to "just push through the pain". It frustrated me that I was only able to walk so slowly. The distance that would normally take 90 mins would sometimes take 2hrs in extreme pain. But I was determined!

And then one day in July a guy said to me "You've lost weight haven't you". And it all unravelled from there. As soon as he said it I knew there was a problem. But for the life in me, I don't know why. Three days later I started bingeing again.

It was on a Sunday afternoon in Cafe Nero. I ordered a large Mocha and a piece of chocolate chunk fudge cake - definitely the best chocolate cake ever! And after that I went to KFC and had a full meal with a sundae for afters. And from there it was open season. I daren't even write about all the stuff I've eaten since then because I'm desperate not to set myself off again. But let's just say *vast amounts of food*. I think that covers it. And I only vomited after eating three times in the last six weeks of hell. And each of those times was after I'd actually eaten healthy food. How screwy is that?

So now I'm back to where I was weightwise at the beginning of April.

Back then I had read an article about a family of four who weighed about 83 stone (that's 1162 lbs for US readers) between them. Sadly they lived in quite a rough place where people called them names in the street - including referring to them as "the Teletubbies". When I looked in the mirror and realised there was a teletubbie looking back at me, that was when I knew I had to change. Now the teletubbie is back again and I've got to go through the whole battle yet again.

WHY? WHY? WHY?