Uuugghhhhh!

I am halfway through at least half a dozen posts … and I just can’t finish them. I have zero energy, I’m not eating much but feel bloated and exhausted, and my weight has been stuck for several weeks. Ugh ugh ugh!

I stayed with the Daniel diet until Day 36. By that point my weight had gone down 25 lbs, then crawled back up 5 lbs for no discernible reason, and there it stuck for about 10 days. I just got sick of it! So I switched to Phase 2 – Eating Like A Thin Person – a few days early. And that’s been kinda going okay, in that I have little desire to eat much or often and few serious cravings. However, I am still inclined to stuff down more than I actually need if the food is particularly yummy and it’s a social occasion and I’m hungry. And regardless of how much I eat, I feel completely disgusting and entirely disinclined to get on a scale.

Today I realized that I’d been sitting on the couch for hours. I mean, HOURS. I would read for a while, then come to the end of a chapter and think to myself, “Okay, get up and do this, this and this,” and then sit and stare into space, and then drift back into another chapter.

People in old age homes do this. I am 56. It’s ridiculous!

So I googled “ways to increase metabolism”, and here is the list.

• Green tea. Opinions vary regarding whether it’s best to take the tea or the supplements, but since I have the Green Tea Fat Burner supplements from Costco, I’m going to start with those. (They contain caffeine, which is also recommended in limited quantities, and I’m pleased it’s in the capsules since I rarely drink coffee or soda.) I think they made a difference in the past, but stopped taking all supplements (apart from thyroid tabs and a greatly reduced dose of Fluoxetine) when I started the Daniel diet.
• Fish oil. Hate the fish-breath the Costco capsules give me … but hate staring into space more.
• At least three veg and two fruit servings per day. I ate plenty of both while on the Daniel diet, but have cut way back recently, mainly because food preparation demands effort and I don’t have the energy. I am just going to have to battle through this one.
• Protein. Apparently digesting protein burns up more calories than digesting carbs. Argh … cooking … sigh.
• Spice it up. Capsicum and other spicy foods burn energy. Well, I guess if I’m cooking anyway… sigh some more.
• Exercise – both aerobic and muscle-burning. I was doing the 5BX exercises until I had a sciatica flare-up … but lately I’ve barely moved. Poor Argos is feeling the lack of serious training time. So … okay. As of tomorrow, I will set my alarm to go off every hour on the hour, and when it does I will get up and move for 15 minutes. Maybe clean house, maybe work with Argos, maybe do yardwork, maybe lift weights.
• Frequent snacking. UGH. I am not hungry! Except when I am, and then I want a LOT. Oh well … I’m just going to have to force down five (small) meals a day, because apparently that also keeps the metabolism chugging along better than fewer meals of whatever size.
• Drink more water. And it should be iced, because warming it up burns calories. I’ve been pretty good about a daily 2-3 liters, but I’m going to push it up to 4 liters per day. I Am Woman – Hear Me Slosh!
• Sleep. This has been the worst. A side effect of spending hours every day sitting on my butt staring into space / at a book / at my computer monitor has been that I don’t want to go to bed, and when I do I tend to read until way past midnight. And then I sleep late, and wake up exhausted. Woe and alackaday!

Yeah, I know this is an uninspired post on a boring topic – who wants to read about someone else’s flab woes, after all? But for some reason writing it here helps me, and since this is, after all, my blog, that will have to do.

I will post something more entertaining on Wednesday. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my beautiful boy. How could I not love walkies with such a companion?

Argos

Day 21 – half way to 40

My bathroom scale and I are friends again. In 20 days of the Daniel diet, I have lost at least 21 lbs. It’s actually probably more, because around 10 days before I started this my scale went on strike, causing me such despondency that I crawled into a hole and binged until I scared myself enough to go public with Phase 1 of a practical plan to change.

Maybe going public is what made the difference. I didn’t want to go on here – even with my pathetically few (albeit hugely valued!!!) followers – and admit that I’d failed. Again. Plus, your words of encouragement really helped – thank you! More than that, something inside my head has clicked. I just, quite simply, don’t want to live here any more.

I don’t look like this. And actually, that’s okay.

The good news is that my head continues to be clear. No more brain fog! This morning, just for the heck of it, I did a Mensa quiz – just a fun thing I found online – and I was able to do most of it in my head, while lying in bed, using my not-smart-enough-for-Mensa phone. Then I had to get up to work something out using algebra, and my phone took the opportunity to check out, so I have no idea how I did on the test … but the point is, I was thinking clearly enough to enjoy the challenge.

Also, various body parts – in particular, ankles – don’t hurt any more. The relief of being able to move without pain is huge! (Despite not being young and beautiful or having a handsome prince handy (sorry, Honey), I acquired a whole new insight into the suffering of The Little Mermaid, who felt as though she was walking on knives.)

Oooh-errr … gotta love me a prince with some stubble! (Yes, of course I believe what They say about men with big noses.) (No, this is not a picture of Himself.)

And I’m no longer hungry. When I started this, no matter how full I stuffed myself with veggies and fruit my body screamed relentlessly for MORE. Now I’m satisfied by a large bowl of oatmeal or fruit and almonds for breakfast, a generous serving of veggies with rice, couscous, sweet potato or potato for lunch, and fruit and almonds for supper. I try to remember to eat in between – just a few pieces of dried fruit or a few nuts – because my blood sugar tends to crash with little warning, but I’m seldom actually hungry.

The lack of variety – due mainly to my unwillingness to spend hours in preparation time – is boring, but the only real craving I’m experiencing is for latte. This is odd because I don’t really care for coffee, but I miss meeting friends in coffee shops – and my emerging body would like to celebrate these times with just a plain latte, not one of the cream-and-caramel-infested concoctions I used to choose, and no need for a cookie.

This is what I really crave…

The big challenge continues to be low energy levels. I am eager to be up and doing and it doesn’t hurt like it used to, but I run out of steam in no time at all. This is partly because I’m taking in few calories (although I eat as much and as often as I want to), but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s also because I have absolutely no muscle tone.

Tell people you’re involved in dog rescue, and the picture that comes to their minds is of someone who spends a lot of time going walkies and throwing balls. This can be true for dog foster parents, but not if you’re running the rescue. For five years, my life narrowed down to my computer (lots and lots and LOTS of emails, plus endless paperwork), my phone (calls started at 6.00AM and were still coming in as late as 2.00AM – “I just picked up a dog and I think it’s hurt and I don’t know what to do!” “My dog is having puppies and one seems to be stuck and I don’t know what to do!” “My neighbor’s dog is chained up and it can’t get out of the rain and I don’t think they’re feeding it and I don’t know what to do!” “I’m moving to another state tomorrow and I can’t take my dog and I don’t know what to do!”), my car (picking up dogs, transporting dogs, taking dogs to the vet), and the vet’s office. Sitting and stressing and stressing and sitting.

How does one say no?

By the time I burned out at the end of last year, I was no longer capable of doing much beyond reading, eating, sleeping and sobbing into my pillow, so that’s how I spent the first half of this year. Result: muscle tone as close to zero as it can be without my arms and legs falling off.

So today I pulled a battered little book out of my bookshelf. It’s called Physical Fitness, and my cousin passed it on to The Aged Crone when I was a teenager (this was before she was really a crone, of course) and I can remember chugging through those exercises with no trouble at all. They’re based on something developed by the Canadian Air Force and take only 12 minutes to do, so not an insurmountable challenge – or so I thought.

Hah!

Going to take a while to get to this level…

This morning I started at the very simplest level and two of the exercises just aren’t possible. Stand on one leg while lifting the other knee to my chest? You have got to be kidding me! Run? I managed a fast march, and after the required count of 50 (that’s 100 paces) I was a wobbling wreck. Jump 10 times? I have no shadow of doubt I would break something if I were ambitious (silly!) enough to try.

But I worked through the exercises anyway. And I will do so again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day. Because this person who has to rest after every. Single. Chore … this person who couldn’t keep up with a terminally ill friend when they went shopping together (happened yesterday) … is not the person I want to be.

Day 10 – I quit

What I want more than anything else right now is to achieve self-discipline. Quitting might seem an odd way to begin focusing on that goal, but a key aspect of self-discipline, as opposed to imposed discipline, is that it should be meaningful.

For me, daily blogging is not meaningful. It’s a dead bore – largely because I’m so darn fixated on thinking about something to write about that will justify hitting the publish button, that I don’t have time to think or do anything that’s actually worth writing about. Enough! Henceforth, I will aim to write a little every day, but to post only weekly, on Wednesdays.

Mainly, though, I want to begin establishing some other disciplines, or habits. And this is a challenge, because although being up and moving is easier and less painful, it’s still hard. My energy levels are still frustratingly low; I really thought they’d be better by now, but although my head is generally clearer and I have periods of reasonable energy, I get tired quickly. I guess that’s to be expected when you’re carrying around a whole extra person.

Anyway… I’ve made a list of stuff I need to do every day. Mostly it’s housework and a few outside chores. There’s some desk work, including writing and income generation, so that when I need to sit down I can do so without wasting time. And there are some activities I do just for joy’s sake, like training Argos.

Little by little, I am reconstructing my life, incorporating a richness than I’ve not been able to allow myself for … far too long.

With the Daniel diet I’m getting my body into shape. No of course I haven’t quit the diet – do you think I’m nuts? It’s no fun and I’m pretty sick of it, but I’ve survived the first 25%; just one month to go and I can adopt a less restrictive approach to eating. I’ll be controlling my diet for the rest of my life, of course, but it won’t always have to be this stringent.

Anyway … the body is coming right. Now I want to expand beyond my skin and pay a little more attention to my immediate environment.

At the back of my mind is the knowledge that I’m still neglecting the most important task, which is to focus on the spiritual … but I’m just not ready to do that right now. It’s too easy to start out praying and end up navel-gazing. So I’m just trusting in God to wait for me for a little longer.

That’s all for now, folks. Thanks for staying with me!

Your turn. Are you happy with the shape of your life right now? What techniques help you live to the full each day?

Day 7, and Dude’s story

It’s the last day of my first week on the Daniel diet, and I am beyond sick of it. I am sick of being hungry, and desperate for the taste of brie on my tongue. Will you think less of me if I just quit? Why should I care what you think? And yet … I do. It’s disappointing not to get more comments and messages of support, but that’s a new blogger thing, I guess. And every now and then there is a comment, and that’s how I know you’re watching. I’m not just shouting into the void; there’s someone out there. Plus, my mother reads this blog. So does Himself – and he expects me to fail; I shouldn’t blame him (although I do, of course) because he’s seen it happen so many times before. But not today.

So instead of eating, or thinking about eating, or writing about eating, I will tell you a story.

The Dude, plotting the kidnapping (or rescue) of Argos’ blue bunny

I got involved in dog rescue the way I make pretty much all the major changes in my life – on blind impulse. First there’s the growing pressure of dissatisfaction with the status quo, then an opportunity emerges, promising change. Maybe something better, certainly something different. I teeter on the brink, pushed one way by fear of change and the other by fear of not-change. I remind myself that I need to “seek God’s will”, think strategically, weigh the odds, seek advice. And then I leap, and deal with the consequences as they march up and smack me.

Hey, it’s a method. It works. And yes, I get bruised and quite often I break, but I also see glory.

So … Dude. Actually, there’s nothing all that special about Dude’s story. He’s just one among thousands. He turned up at our local shelter, an unclaimed stray (in other words, dumped). And there he sat, for months, until we bailed him out. I was responsible for evaluating the dogs our rescue took in, and it was clear from the start that he would never be adopted from the shelter. He’s kinda funny-looking in a pop-eyed way, and although he has the softest coat, you couldn’t know that when he was incarcerated. First, he wouldn’t let anyone touch him; he was one desperately scared boy. And second, he stank the way all shelter dogs do – of pee and shit made of cheap dog food and harsh cleaning chemicals. No normal person would want to cuddle that.

Fortunately (sometimes), rescue people aren’t “normal”, so he got to go stay with a volunteer foster mama. She had a securely fenced yard that he couldn’t escape from (he tried), and a couple other dogs who showed him the ropes once he quit showing them his teeth, a cat who made him feel safe, and an unending stream of teenagers who just kept treating him like a normal dog until he learned to behave like one.

One of the things I was especially proud of with our rescue was that we never rushed our dogs through the process. Sometimes a dog that’s been unkindly treated or injured needs extra recovery time. If you’re lucky you might find an adopter who’s willing to put in the work, but most people want their new dog to be ready to fit in with their family. We also took our time about ensuring that the home we chose for each dog was the best fit we could manage. If a family wasn’t the right fit, they didn’t get that dog.

Dude was with his foster family for a whole year before he went home “for good” to an older woman who lived with her 50-year-old daughter. I drove him to their home myself, and it was just perfect! A big yard with trees full of squirrels, a cozy little house with a dog bed in every room, and two active, healthy moms to dote on him all day and every day. I checked in a couple times in the months that followed, and he was happy and well-loved.

But sometimes forever doesn’t last. A few weeks ago I got a call from Dude’s adopter’s other daughter. Something happened to her sister earlier this year – something bad; I don’t know what. (Yes of course I googled her name.) She’d moved out of the home. And then mom started failing, and moved into a retirement complex near the other daughter. She had her own apartment and Dude went with her, but within weeks of moving in she slipped into dementia and had to go into a high-care facility. Dude was homeless.

The daughter told me,  “When I went to help Mom get packed up, your business card was on the fridge, with Dude’s name on it. Can you help?” Well, retired or not, we’d made a promise to that dog – and to every dog we rehomed. We promised they would never be homeless again. So he’s back with me, until the people who now run the rescue find someone else who promises to love him “forever”.

I should be glad to know he’s okay. Well of course I’m glad! But … I’m also haunted. In the five years Himself and I ran our rescue, we placed at least 600 dogs, all with the same promise. Are they okay? What if something bad happened to their people, and whoever cleaned up their mess didn’t know about us? What about all the refrigerator doors that don’t have our card?

That saying, “If you save someone’s life, you are responsible for them for the rest of their life” – it’s not real. It’s a literary construct – fake Confucianism – and anyway, I’m not Chinese. But.

I saved their lives. They’re lodged in my heart.

Are they okay?

Your turn. Have you saved any lives that have then moved on to be lived away from you? What about the creatures who depend on you – is there a plan in place if something bad happens to you? 

Day 2, with apricots

Update on the diet: so far so good. Yesterday was fairly rough, with little energy and much sleepiness, aches and pains – likely caused more by an excess of rich food and drink the night before, than by the radical simplicity of Going Daniel. Last night brought another valuable reminder of Why Fatness Is Bad For You: I snored so loudly at one point that I woke myself up. Ugh! I’d feel sorry for Himself, if he weren’t as bad! However, snoring like a truck indicates a shortage of that essential princessness that lies at the heart of every woman. Well, maybe not every woman – but certainly at my heart, which is the one I’m concerned about here!

Today it was hard to wake up, but once I did I found I had noticeably more mental and physical energy than in the past few days. I’m also feeling nice and empty … Not to get too graphic, but all that roughage in yesterday’s fruit, nuts and veggies, flushed along with lots of our sweet, home-grown well water, is working its magic.

For breakfast this morning, I visited the apricot tree.

This has been a great season for apricots! Over the past few weeks, Himself and I have been engaged in delicious experimentation in the kitchen (no, don’t you be getting all kinky, now! I’m fat and he’s old – these experiments were strictly culinary!) And I have been taking pictures and keeping track, specifically in order to share the bounty. Or at least to tantalize you with it.

This is where we started, before picking. The apricot tree, a pear and a nectarine all grow in a fenced area that is also home to our chickens. They have been STUFFING themselves on windfalls! Apricot chicken, anyone?

So … first, Himself made a large batch of apricot jam. It didn’t set quite as it should have so is a bit runny, but the flavor is excellent – perfect for french toast or pancakes.

I then made apricot preserves. I started with this recipe, trebled for 6 lb apricots. but they cooked down so much I went ahead and added another 5-6 lb apricots (but without increasing the sugar). The result is just out of this world!

Himself made apricot puree and apricot leather, and I filled the crockpot with apricots and stewed them down, with just a little stevia for sweetening. They are delicious and sugar-free, so I can enjoy them a la Daniel…:) (Stevia’s a natural substance, not an artificial chemical sweetener, so I feel okay using it.)

Finally on Sunday, I baked up loaves of vanilla cake for the freezer, only I replaced some of the milk with apricot juice, and then I dumped in a whole lot of fresh blueberries (a gift from a neighbor). I’ve been using this recipe since I was about 12; it was originally handed out with Stork margarine, which I don’t think even exists any more (plus margarine, you know, ick). It’s a fairly solid cake, which I like, and the recipe is pretty much fool proof. (For instance, I meant to double the quantities for this recipe and accidentally tripled them, and it STILL worked!) Fool-proof recipes are necessary for me. I’ve had a good run with these apricots but don’t be fooled; I am usually completely inept in the kitchen! Anyway, here’s the recipe – enjoy.

Beat and Bake Cake

9 oz (250 g) sugar
6 oz (180 g) butter
10 oz (280 g) flour
2 oz (60 g) corn flour (aka corn starch, aka Maizena)
1 T (15 ml) baking powder
Pinch salt
4 eggs + milk to make 2 Cups
1 t vanilla

All ingredients should be at room temperature.  Set oven at 350 F (180 C).
Cream sugar with slightly softened butter.
Sieve together flour, corn flour, baking powder and salt.
Break eggs into measuring jug, add milk to make up to 2 C, and add vanilla essence.
Mix well at low speed, pausing regularly to scrape ingredients together.  Try not to mix for longer than about 1 ½ minutes total.
Pour into greased cake pans. Put onto oven rack slightly below middle.
Bake for about 30 min. Turn out onto cooling racks.

Variations:

Cocoa in place of corn flour.
Lemon or orange rind added to liquid, replace milk with water and lemon or orange juice, no vanilla.
25 ml coffee powder diluted in hot water and mixed with cold milk, then added to eggs.