Tag: diet

The Answer to Everything

Published on by cmglife

No matter what I’ve had wrong with me: depression, Bipolar 2, Reynaud’s disease, hypothyroidism, double vision, wanting to lose a few pounds, etc. It’s always comes back to the cure of a healthy diet, healthy weight, no alcohol, mindfulness, meditation, sleep, stay hydrated and the dreaded exercise. All of these things I hear over and over again. I read it, am told it, discuss it and never have been able to live it.

Let’s break it down.

Healthy diet.

I have a strange relationship with food. My mother had an eating disorder, maybe because she grew up in England during WWII rations. I have tons of food stories, but basically my sister and I were often even hungry or couldn’t eat what she had cooked.

I tried the glorified Mediterranean diet, Atkins, Keto, Paleo and intermittent fasting (turns out this is the only one I can stick to).

Staying Hydrated

I’ve often wondered what our ancestors did when wandering out on the plains looking for food without a liter of purified water in their steel water bottle to stay hydrated with the calculation of a liter per day per pound or whatever the calculation is. They say when you are thirsty you are actually dehydrated, what? I’m not a doctor, but I am a human being having lived a lot of years, and none of this has ever rung true for me.

Healthy Weight/Exercise

This one is the trickiest because it involves all three. Exercise to achieve a healthy weight and mind.

For me personally these have seemed to be insurmountable, actually not seemed, I’ve never been able to combine them for a healthier me, physically and mentally. I get the advice from doctors about the exercise. I have even put the exercise equipment and even the workout clothes right there in front of the TV and I either forget because I don’t notice (ADD), get home to late or up too late or the other third I just don’t want to.

I would love to walk. I have a nice neighborhood, no kids at home so I should be able to put on my tennis shoes and take off anytime. According to the experts walking is the best exercise. That sounds great in theory for other people, but for me I have anxiety that I haven’t’ been able to overcome. Several things have happened to me walking alone and I have finally stopped beating myself up about not walking. My god, I have enough things I am doing successfully, walking is really on the bottom of my list of overcoming another PTSD moment.

Meditation

I don’t know about you, but this one is just too hard for me to stop and relax. I’ve meditated before and I liked it. I liked the man guiding me through the session. But after a while I realized it wasn’t helping me with the pile of things it was supposed to help. Plus it is almost impossible for me to stop and not do anything for 30 minutes

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is too much work. In my mind it’s a racket and just another form of “self care” which takes more time and effort that actually taking care of myself. I take of myself in my own way thank you and it does not include candles and turning off my electronics.

Sleep and Alcohol

I do agree with these on a personal basis. Sleep is paramount. I only suffer from a few sleepless nights every once and a while, there is usually a reason. Stress, forgetting to take meds rolling eye emoji again or ruminating. Sleep is something that I depend on for my physical and mental health and I am lucky to not have a problem. I’m sure I would be in a different place if I did have trouble.

Alcohol only in moderation most of the time. I was dependent on alcohol for many reasons. I’ve endured a lot in my life, but being able to actually conquer drinking was hard. Actually I think quitting smoking might have been harder.

The things I’ve listed above are all things that we’ve all been led to believe are the miracle cure for everything we are suffering with. It sounds so simple and reliable but it’s not. I have managed to see results with sleep and cutting out the bottle of wine a night. They were hard, but the results were practically immediate. Not having immediate satisfaction is really the problem.

I Know What This Looks Like…

Published on by cmglife

I may have devoured a rotisserie chicken while driving home, but at least  I didn’t stop at Carl Jr’s and ruin my diet plan.  

Full Circle

Published on by cmglife

I was going to write about my juice fast I’ve been on for four days. I say, I was, until I realized how I must be boring everyone with diet after diet.

I thought I’d write about my son, 18, who just graduated and has overnight turned into a horrible version of himself. More of the same, dull.

How about my bipolar II condition? Then I thought, do I capitalize the “b” in bipolar and do I use roman numerals for the “II” or the numeral “2”.

Obviously, sidetracked I started to write about my love of Adam Lambert and U2 (do you know I met Bono) (yes, yes, I did!).  Adam’s next (dare to dream)!

I wrote about the silly predicaments I get myself into. For instance, I kept biting the inside of my lip every time I cheated and ate on the four day juice fast (Karma I think). It’s going to take at least four days to heal!

See, somehow I have written about all the same boring things, but I have come full circle. That makes me feel better, you know, finishing things.

Here We Go Again

Published on by cmglife

Oh, here we go again. I’m about to embark on another diet and exercise regimen. All in an effort to get rid of the weight that I hate to admit has been put on and is nearly impossible to get off because of my age.

I was at a party the other night when someone said they didn’t think I had a reason to worry about my weight.

“But, I’ve never been this weight” I said.

There was such an outburst of laughter and statements like “well neither have I” from six or seven women my age. I felt a little naïve.

Naïve or stubborn, I am not giving in.

My new plan is The Fast Diet. I start June 1. That will be my first fast of 500 calories day, two days a week. In between that you are supposed to eat normally (don’t know what that means anymore).

Tristan suggested cardio. Easy for him to say, at 18 he does a 9 mile hike on a whim after working all day or going to school.

For cardio I have decided to use my tread climber which I have used intermittently in the last few years. Second only to the “nine circles of hell of sweating” is the “abyss of boredom”.

The last time I used the machine I had a plan. I bought the audio book of “Fifty Shades of Grey”. I thought it might keep me interested enough to stay on the machine and burn some calories. Hey! Don’t judge! I was curious, there used to be a lot of hype around those books. I listened to it for a while and then got too embarrassed in front of myself to continue. It was more mortifying when I plugged our iPad into my computer to charge it and then later realized the book had synced with my iTunes account.

Note to self: Delete “Fifty Shades of Grey” off the family iPad.

Average Day

Published on by cmglife

Pretty average day today.

My new “Four Day Diet” book arrived in the mail. I started to read it, then skimmed through the fluff and got right down to the diet menus. I was typing out a shopping list, but couldn’t read the computer with my reading glasses on and couldn’t read the book without the readers! Tried to wear them halfway down my nose, but then I couldn’t breath. Taking them on and off again was pulling my hair. It took me at least half an hour longer to do this task than it should have (similar to telling this story).

Allison is sick today so I kept her company by watching “Pretty Little Liars” with her. Not that watching it wasn’t bad enough, she kept pausing the show every few minutes to explain the characters and plot to me.

Went to the grocery store and put three yogurts into a strange man’s basket even though he was saying, “Excuse, me. Excuse, me!”

I finally looked up and saw it was not my husband after all, just a doppelganger (bet you don’t know the last time you’ve used that term).

Got home, unloaded the car and dropped a jar of Ragu in the driveway.

Yeah, that’s about it.