Start with a gasp

I’m a shower-before-bed person. I’ve never been able to understand how a person can get between the sheets all dusty and sticky from the day, and actually sleep. Even if I haven’t done much to raise a sweat and I feel cleanish and I’m tired so I don’t bother, as I lie there I can feel the gross stickiness of skin ooze and air crud. Ugh! Gotta get up, shower it off, rub dry, and then I can sleep.

Well, sometimes. Insomnia is a thing. But that’s a topic for another post.

Returning to the topic of this post, there’s this blogger that I sort of follow, by which I mean that I receive her posts in one of my many extra email accounts – the one dedicated to efforts at self-improvement. I believe in having lots of separate accounts because I wear different mindsets when I’m trying to be a better person, or farming and gardening, or dealing with our finances, or writing, or blogging. If all my emails go into a single account the result is a mess worse than the top of my desk, and I can’t find anything and nothing gets done.

On the other hand, I don’t check all those accounts every day, and as for the self-improvement one … well, I read the email topics as they come up as notifications on my phone, but usually that’s about it. Self-improvement is something I aspire to wanting to do, but most of the time it’s hard enough just to be as good as I already am.

Anyway, this blogger – she calls herself “Dr. Stephanie” and she writes mainly about keto and fasting, and she offers various courses, none of which I’ve actually done – wrote a post about how effective humans kick-start their day. It happened to land in my inbox on a day when I was lying in bed, hating myself for lacking the energy to get the hell up and do something with whatever was left of my pathetic life … and I read it.

Most of her suggestions I’ve forgotten. They were things like “feel gratitude” and “journal”, which are lovely feel-good ideas, but in the moment didn’t feel sufficiently like the kick in the butt I was craving. The cold shower, however … Now that sounded like a punishment worthy of the name! That I deserved.

So I dragged my bloated, sweaty (this was back when nights were hot) almost-corpse from between the sheets and into the shower. And I turned the faucet on to cold. And wailed.

It was so horrible!

Oh. My. Word. It was so horrible.

But then a strange thing happened. First, my eyes – clenched shut against the bright light of the bathroom – popped open. Then my skin stopped cringing from the rush of icy water, and I found myself intentionally exposing places like my armpits and the back of my neck and the crack of my butt – not exactly enjoying the rush of cold, but welcoming it anyway.

She recommended five minutes. I didn’t time myself but I doubt I lasted that long. I simply rinsed all over, rotating and bending to let the water get at all my less accessible spots. I didn’t use soap or a cloth, just cold water. Then I stepped out, found a fresh towel, and scrubbed myself dry.

I felt … Amazing. Invigorated. Energized.

Fun fact: this insanity is actually good for you. This morning when I went poking through Google in search of funny free images of cold showers, I found any number of articles touting cold showers as a solution to obesity, depression, low sex drive, bad skin, low energy – in short, pretty much all the ills that might beset your fleshly self.

Plus it was kinda magical, actually, how it made me feel.

Irrelevant photo of a happy memory. That’s another kind of magic. And being able to enjoy a happy memory … That’s the magic I really want to flow through me.

So I did it again the next day. And the day after that. And again a few more times. Then came a day when I had to rush for an early appointment and didn’t have time, and I felt icky all day, so the next day I made sure to shower again. Every now and then I skip for a day or two … but I keep going back to it.

It is always horrible. The only way to do it is to drag myself out of bed and get under the shower before I do anything else, because giving myself time to think about it – for instance while I put in contact lenses or brush teeth – just makes it worse. And now, as the nights get cold and the early mornings are chilly and I’m waking up before dawn as often as not, it’s really, really hard. Frankly, given my record for doing really hard things, I’m not that optimistic that I’ll keep going when winter really sinks its teeth into us. But … I hope I will. I intend to try.

Because that moment when my eyes pop open? When suddenly and with no effort of will going back to sleep is not only impossible, but also not remotely desirable? Holy cow, it’s a rush like no other!

Hey there – talk to me! What’s your favorite way to mortify your flesh? Does it make you feel as good as a cold shower?

The fast way to self-improvement

Well, I did it again, and this time I won! I have 95% successfully completed my second water fast. I didn’t journal the first one but this time around I thought it would be interesting to track how my body responded.

As before, I jumped into this after several weeks of thinking about getting prepared to think seriously about doing it. Tuesday night I was dinking around on Facebook and I popped in to see what was happening on Aussa’s new group page, and she’d just posted her weekly challenge to set a goal and grab it by the … pearl necklace and make it behave.

Just like this. But with jeans. And my belly button is still an innie. (Source)

I was not in my happy place. It was nearly midnight, which meant I had once again failed to get to bed early enough to bounce out of bed, all full of get-up-and-go, before sunrise. (Here in the gloomy north the sun doesn’t rise until nearly 7.30 at this time of the year, but I’m pretty pathetic when it comes to sleep. I fight it like a bitch, but I need a lot of zzzzzs.) I’d been in full binge mode (aka compulsive pleasure-free eating) for nearly a week, and I felt squeezed by my XXXL jeans despite having undone both button and zipper,  and was also regretting the ice cream I’d engulfed earlier that evening in the hope that a sugar hit would keep me awake long enough to manage the half hour drive home from the vet. (It didn’t. I had to pull over for a snooze less than 10 miles from home.)

In other words, my life was once again out of control at its most fundamental level. So, of course, I sneered and hated myself and kept scrolling to read about the extraordinary successes racked up by my fellow Aussa bitches … and then my fingers took over my brain, and by the time they’d done dancing around on the keyboard I had scrolled back and announced my intention to do a full water fast, starting immediately. Then I logged off and went to bed, quickly, before I was compelled to eat something.

I started each day with two green tea capsules (for energy) and a splash of raw apple cider vinegar in water (for gut health). We’re blessed with delicious water – our well draws from an aquifer nearly 600 ft down below a thick layer of rock. During the day I drank tap water whenever I felt thirsty. I slept longer and more deeply than usual, and woke feeling refreshed. I didn’t do any extra exercise, and as the fast progressed I moved more slowly and rested more often, responding to the needs of my body.

Ask Google “What happens to my body when I fast?” if you want to invite a barrage of conflicting information, ranging from “Your muscles will shrivel up and you will diiiieeee!” to “You will directly experience Nirvana and your whole life will change forever!” The interweb is host to hordes of experts, both self-proclaimed and accredited, and it can get confusing, so choosing your guru is pretty much an act of faith. As with any faith, the smart way to go is to study what the guru says, check in with opposing views to maintain your balance, remember that if anything sounds too good to be true it probably (but not definitely) is, and over time evaluate what they say based on your personal experience.

My guru of choice is Dr. Jason Fung. He’s flavor of the month and also way too young and pretty – definite red flags – but on consideration, for now at any rate, I’m willing to hop on his wagon and see where it takes me.

Day 1 – Tuesday

I didn’t start to feel hungry until quite late in the day, and several hours before I felt hungry I was aware of other benefits – dramatically reduced inflammatory pain in my muscles and joints, no brain fog, and a happier, more relaxed mood. I was moderately active (by my low standards) and became tired shortly after dark.

According to Fung, during the first day of my fast my insulin levels dropped and my body accessed its glycogen stores to release glucose for energy. The human body keeps a 24-hour glycogen reserve mainly in the liver and skeletal muscles. That stored in the liver is available wherever energy is needed (and apparently most of it goes to the brain! For some reason I find that reassuring.) As I understand it, the glycogen stored in muscle tissue used by the muscles, not readily released to the rest of the body.

As the day progressed without any more carbs going in, my basal metabolic rate fell as my body sought to cut back on energy expenditure. Most of the pro-fasting literature I’ve read says your metabolic rate rises again after a few days of fasting, to above your normal level, but I didn’t get to experience that. Maybe next time, when I go for longer…

Day 2 – Wednesday

Woke early feeling clear-headed and energetic, but after I got up I quickly ran out of energy. No hunger pangs as such, but I was aware that my body wanted fuel. My head felt tight, as though it was thinking about having an ache, but in fact I didn’t experience any headache during this fast.

I spent the day being gentle with myself, resting often, but still writing and doing my regular chores. By the afternoon I was ravenous and stupid, and by evening I was still hungry, tired, irritable and floppy all over. I was also constantly thirsty, despite drinking lots of water.

For some reason I cooked dinner for the male members of the household – my signature spaghetti bolognese. I don’t ever cook without tasting (I learned that the hard way – but that’s a story for another day) so I had maybe a teaspoonful of bolognese sauce and one strand of spaghetti … and then, after gritting my teeth and not eating with the men I couldn’t resist the redolence. I ate four, I mean five, okay SIX teaspoons of bolognese sauce. It was almost unbearably delicious. My stomach had pretty much given up on me by then and was hiding in a corner grumbling sadly to itself, so it was a little startled when that lot came walloping down my gullet. But the discomfort passed quickly and the relief was great!

Mind you, I was pissed at myself. I felt I’d let myself down, and was tempted to call myself a loser and just quit. But it was only meat, not carbs, and totaled well under 100 calories, so I decided to declare the fast unbroken and keep going. (Full disclosure: I ate a few teaspoons of bolognese sauce again the next night – I was just so hungry, and it was there. But that’s the only food I consumed for the 84 hours I fasted, so I feel … not good, but okay about it. Next time I’ll do better.)

To know what was happening with my body, I turned again to Dr. Fung. After 24 hours my body had depleted its store of glycogen, which activated other processes to generate energy.

• My liver kicked into gluconeogenesis, creating glucose from amino acids.
• In a parallel process (and I’m not going to pretend I understand yet how they are connected) it launched into autophagy, which essentially involves cannibalizing junk proteins, also to generate energy. If you want scholarly literature on the subject, Google has plenty; for those who want a greatly simplified explanation in layman’s terms, go here.
• Meanwhile, the hunger pangs kept coming and going because of a hormone called ghrelin – and the interesting thing about that is that ghrelin will switch itself off after a couple hours if you ignore it, even if you don’t eat. Knowing that hunger won’t last makes it a lot easier to resist!

The most important of these processes, as far as I’m concerned, is autophagy. This is relatively easy to trigger – unlike ketosis, which takes longer and can be harder to sustain. All you have to do is not eat for 24-48 hours. Unfortunately I didn’t get the full benefit of it, because eating even a small amount of protein switches it off. I wish I’d known that … It might have made it possible to resist the bolognese…

Day 3 – Thursday

I’ve read about how, after fasting for a few days, your body kicks into higher energy mode. The theory is that its initial response to a lack of food is to reduce your rate of energy consumption (aka “starvation mode”), so your metabolism slows and you feel tired and sleepy. But if there’s still nothing on the menu after a couple days your body goes “Woah! Gotta fix this!” and you experience a surge in energy, as well as much greater clarity of thought – because you have to get out there and chase something down and kill it.”

I was kinda hoping to feel that way by Thursday, but … nope. I woke hungry and was tired and draggy all day. My brain was clear but I was so fumble-tongued I might as well have been catatonic, for all I could communicate. During the afternoon I went out into the garden with Peter Pan to discuss vegetable matters, and – being too floppy to pick up my feet properly – I tripped over a squash vine and went down like a dropped two-by-four. And once down … well, I lay there for a while on the cool dirt, thinking about how nice it would be simply to stay there. Getting vertical again took way more effort than seemed worthwhile!

Anyway, Dr. Fung says you go into ketosis after two to three days of fasting, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen for me this time. I’ve always struggled to achieve and maintain ketosis, even when eating super low-carb and high fat. I’m not diabetic but maybe I’m somewhat insulin-resistant; I need to learn more about it and figure out how to change.

Day 4 – Friday

I went into this fast not sure how long I’d stay with it, but determined to last longer than I did last time. About halfway in a friend called and invited me for tea, so I put her off until Friday afternoon and set my goal at noon Friday – giving me 84 hours of fasting, or 12 hours more than last time. And I made it! In fact, I think if I hadn’t had the tea date I could even have lasted longer. By Friday morning the hunger pangs were less and my head was clear and alert, although I was still physically quite weak.

This time, I broke my fast gradually. At noon I had a cup of hot, salty bone broth. About a half hour later I had a small fruit yogurt with heaped spoonful of crushed pecans, which kept me going an hour and a half. Then I had a cheddar and tomato sandwich – just one slice, not my usual two. Tea was more indulgent – I chowed down on crackers with whipped cream cheese and pepper jelly and found room for lemon cake, but after that I didn’t want dinner. In fact, I didn’t eat again until after noon on Saturday.

Since then I’ve been ramping up my food consumption, which is annoying – why this relentless compulsion to eat? Still … I do seem still to want smaller quantities, and I seem to be going longer between meals, and I don’t have quite the same desire for sugar … so I guess I’ve gained some ground.

I found, while fasting, that my mood improved greatly. Since going back onto sugar I’ve been more irritable and short-tempered. The burning, aching inflammatory pain in my joints and muscles stopped entirely and still hasn’t come back – although it will if I’m not careful. I slept very deeply while fasting, and when I started eating again I immediately fell back into my night owl habits, reinforced by insomnia. My jeans were looser, but they’re getting tight again.

Now what?

The main takeaway seems to be that very fat people are more likely to survive the initial weeks of the Zombie Apocalypse because, provided we have access to water, we’ll be able to hide away and live off our fat stores for a good long while – and when the hunger pangs don’t bite we’ll even have a jolly old time of it, because our brains will be sharp enough to joke, sing and tell stories.

We’ll find a cozy hole and party like Hobbits. (Original illustration by David Wenzel)

But over the longer term the outlook for VFPs isn’t so good, unless our hiding place also includes some weights and an exercise bicycle.

I’m convinced that the reason I didn’t experience the energy surge I expected is that I’m starting off at a frighteningly low level of fitness. It’s unrealistic to think you can go from being someone who can just about maybe almost chase down one chicken in a very small pen without having a heart attack (and actually the last time I tried to do that I eventually had to call in reinforcements in the form of Peter Pan), to being capable of chasing down a wildebeest, merely by not eating.

This is going to take some thought. And planning. And work. And a whole lot less ice cream.

I’ll think about it … tomorrow.

 

Let’s talk. Have you ever tried fasting? What kind of fast, and what was your goal? What was your main takeaway from the experience?

At the tunnel mouth, waiting for the Black Dog

Where do I begin? With the Tunnel I’ve avoided for half a century? Or with the Black Dog that bites my ankles and drives me toward it?

I begin today. I choose to walk into the dark with the dog at my heels.

In February I turned sixty. In three days time I will be sixty-and-a-half. It’s time to figure out what to be when I grow up.

Hah – that’s a cute start to a blog post, right? A little zing, a perky finger to convention, a zap of wry, dry, slyly self-denigrating humor. But, unfortunately, not true.

I know what I want to be – I always have. I even know how to get there. What I don’t know – what I haven’t figured out in forty years, five months and twenty-eight days of trying (the first twenty years it didn’t occur to me “trying” was involved; I still believed in the magical inevitability of I Am) – is how the fuck to make myself keep walking all the way to the destination. (I even know there is no destination, only an unmarked trail through the dark, but I must take it or go nowhere.)

So. Sixty years old. Three-quarters of my life. (Yes, I know it might be only two-thirds, and it may also be sixty sixty-oneths – but three quarters of my grandparents and all my parents made it to their eighties, so that seems a reasonable number to shoot for. Assuming I don’t absent-mindedly shoot myself before I get there.) I spent the first quarter daughtering, the second quarter mothering, the third quarter wifing. Now what?

To be clear, while the daughtering has ended and the mothering is only occasional, the wifing continues. The Hubbit and I ignored our twentieth wedding anniversary a little over a week ago. Random factoid set: Traditionally – insofar as something started less than a century ago can be deemed traditional – in the UK and the US the twentieth is the “china” anniversary. For reasons I haven’t bothered to research, the Chicago Public Library designates it the platinum anniversary. Flowers and jewels are also mentioned.  (I love Wikipedia, don’t you?) So, if we’d been a traditional couple, even marginally romantically inclined, the Hubbit could have escorted me to the antique mall or the art show to buy a big china mixing bowl to replace the one he broke a few years ago and that I still miss every time I have to make do with the greasy-smooth plastic one, or he could have showered me with asters or bedecked me with emeralds. In return, I could have given him pretty much anything from this store, since one of the first things he ever told me about his personal life philosophy (and in twenty years I’ve never seen him stray from it) is that it’s impossible to own too many tools.

What I asked for – in our/my own style of non-traditional romanticity – was that he repair the motor on the boat so that we could once again float down the Columbia, I nude but for a book and he sternly watching our dangling fishing lines. (He used to threaten to pull my line out of the water if I didn’t learn to take the fish off the hook myself, until he realized I was there to be naked in the middle of the river and really didn’t care about the catching part of fishing). I wanted to remember what it was that made me want to live here, so far from Africa. You see, I fell in love with the man first … but it was the river that sealed the deal. We don’t have rivers like the Columbia in Africa.

In any case, I would have settled for a conclusive repair to the septic pump. In return, I promised to clean the house. Neither of us delivered, and in the end it was easier to pretend twenty wasn’t a big deal. Twenty-five years, now – that’s a quarter century. That’s silver. Surely he can get both the boat and the septic fixed, and I can get the house clean, within the next five years.

To get back to my original point: in the context of a lifetime, looking at one more (potential) twenty year stretch, I find myself thinking … this one’s for me.

I started pondering this post a few days ago. (I should have written it then, before brain fog descended, muddling my thoughts and tangling my fingers.) I started writing it early today. (I should have finished it right away, before the dark began to suck me into itself.) Now I’m finding it increasingly difficult to write coherently. Tears dam up behind my cheeks, and the pressure of holding them back makes my face ache. When I look back, trying to make sense of how I got to this place, I see word soup. Fragmented ideas, fractured phrases. They drift just out of reach.

When I read this post again, I will hate it. I will be compelled to edit it. But I will write it anyway, I will say what I have to say as simply and clearly as possible, and I will post it without delay even though I can’t remember why I must, or whom it’s for. It is my yawp.

This is what I have done: I have stopped the drugs. Prozac, Bupropion – it’s been nice to know I could put a leash on the Black Dog, but I want to see what happens if I let it run. Will it turn and devour me? Or will it go fetch – and if so, what will it bring me? And Adderall – it was such a relief to have a diagnosis, an official Label, to paste over a lifetime’s worth of fumbles and failures. Such a victory to think more clearly, to say I would do something and then actually do it.

We – my doctor and I – juggled the drugs until I got to a place where I could actually tell when I was fucking up. Sometimes that made it possible to not fuck up, but even when it didn’t, the experience of actually seeing what my brain was doing was revelatory.

Until it wasn’t. I still create to-do lists, which I edit and organize and reorganize compulsively, in between staring at the wall and playing sudoku – which is what I’d much rather be doing right now, by the way – mindlessly organizing numbers rather than trying to organize my own thoughts into a coherent … what the fuck is this? Explanation? Description? Record? Take a deep breath. What am I doing? I’m trying to write – no, I am writing about where the first six months of the next, maybe last, maybe twenty years of my life have brought me: to the mouth of the Tunnel, to the lair of the Black Dog.

Here, I think, are my options. I can go back to the doctor and have her increase the dose, or change the prescription, or … whatever occurs to her. If I do that, I’ll feel better. The Tunnel will disappear in a puff of fairy dust, and the Black Dog will curl up at my feet like any old Labrador.

And then?

How will I grow up if I never walk through the Tunnel? What can I be if I don’t learn to run with the Black Dog?

So. I have quit the drugs. The next step, which will take me in through the tunnel mouth, is to quit eating.

No, not permanently, for fuck’s sake – I’m not committing suicide. I’m fasting. I don’t know how long for … five days? Forty? As long as I can. I have to go through the hungry and find the burn and then get hungry again, and after that I will eat.

As for the reasons … I was going to write about those but you have Google – they have to do with energy, and ketosis, and autophagy, and cleansing my body of all the toxic crap that (I suspect, and who are you to say I’m wrong?) is off-gassing into my meat my bones my brain.

I remember now why I had to write this. It’s because this is going to suck, mainly for me but also for anyone near me. I may not be a lot of fun to have around. I may have to stop talking. I may not be able to listen. I may not be entirely reliable. I may have to hide under a blanket, or in the closet with the light off. Girl Child and Twiglet, Ngalitjeng, Wonder Woman, Kuja, Parri, and of course my own Hubbit: I have to make this journey, and I don’t know how long it will take, and you can’t come with me and I can’t talk to you about it – except, perhaps, here, where I talk to anyone in the world who happens by.

Don’t call me back. I have to find out who I can be. And if you see the Black Dog with my heart between its teeth, that’s okay. You know I’m good with dogs.

That nip in the air

I’ve been feeling that jittery itch, that scratching between my shoulder blades and nipping at my nose. Cold weather is on its way. Rain, freeze, maybe snow, definitely slush, all coming. Wind that snatches your breath before you can inhale, yanks your foot before you can step. It makes the horses knock-you-down crazy.

One minute it was August. The next, it’s September – supposed to be a mellow month, but today we woke to unexpected and heavy rain. I’ve spent much of the day fidgeting, making lists. I’m suddenly aware that time is running out, and there is much to do before winter. If we fail to do it, we’ll stumble into spring, crash into summer before we’re ready, and lose yet another year of production, growth and beauty.

We’ve done that too often. This has been a painful year of loss and disruption … Last year was eaten by ill-health  … The year before it was something else; recovery from burnout, I think … Enough.

Some good things happened this summer. Like, our swallows came back, for the fourth year in a row, and raised two families of five babies each all crammed into their tiny nest. It’s so much fun when the whole flock of them flies around the house, snatching flies out of the air and gobbling them down.

We’ve entrusted our lives to this place – in this small piece of land in the crook of the Columbia River. What we have here we made out of an empty and untidy field, and wishes and dreams. But then we ran aground – we poured ourselves into rescuing dogs (and sometimes people) and the work gulped us right down, along with our wishes and dreams, and the strength of our bodies and determination of our minds.

At the beginning of this year, I named it my Year of Reclamation. (I told you that already, didn’t I?) And quite apart from all the sad and hurtful things that have happened this year, it’s been a year of taking stock. Considering options. Choosing priorities. Making lists.

Now it’s September, and I’m fidgety with the need to Get Things Done, and frustrated by the slow, painful inefficiency of my unwieldy body.

Oh well. I guess that makes my body, yet again, the first priority. After a year of try-fail-try-again I have quit trying to ease gracefully into health and wellness via intelligent eating, and am currently ramming myself into ketosis by means of a three-day fat fast. Oh my word, it’s horrid! Start the day with a gigantic strong bulletproof coffee, listen to my heart race until lunchtime, chow down on cream cheese and just a little salami, remember remember remember to drink plenty water, nibble a few macadamia nuts in the evening. Think about food all damn day. Huddle under a blanket feeling cold and shitty and try to distract self with a book.

That was yesterday and most of today … and then there was this … tremor. My synapses blinked and took a peek at the world. I took a pee, and … yep, that unmistakable ketone smell. (TMI, I know, but it made me so dang happy!) My toes wiggled and demanded a walk, so I took a couple of the lunatics out into a pasture and threw a ball until they lost it.

Sweet summer days down at the river. Argos has finally learned to swim!

And then I came back inside and … I feel so good! I’m making lists!

Things to do before winter:

• Finish building the raised beds in the veggie garden, fill them up with horse/cow/chicken poop and weeds and some old tree branches and yes, of course, also some dirt. Snuggle them under a good, thick layer of straw. Yank the weeds out of the existing beds, repair as needed, and give them a nice straw duvet as well.
• Prune the grape vines and the apricot/plum/nectarine/pear trees – but only after the pears are done. The pear tree is inside the chicken run, and every evening when I put the chickens away I pick up the windfalls they haven’t eaten and throw them over the fence for the horses. Vos eats with calm authority, but Pal gobbles and foams pear-drool in his effort to get his before Vos takes it.
• Transplant the asparagus, and fill the old asparagus bed up with berry bushes.
• Clean the hen house and give the girls a nice deep bed of fresh hay.
• Pick up and burn the pile of trash wood that the Hubbit insisted on keeping “because it’s useful” – only now it isn’t, it’s just nasty, and – happy day – he agrees it’s time to let it go.
• Clear and plow and seed the front yard. Let there be grass!
• Plow and seed the six or so acre field our neighbor has offered us for winter pasture. I wish we’d managed to do that earlier in the year – we’d have grass there now and would be able to use it in January. Well, no matter. If we do it now, we’ll be able to use it for a little while in summer, and give our pasture a rest.
• Put up hot wire to subdivide the north pasture.
• Protect what’s left of the weeping birch from the cattle.
• Repair the divider the bull broke in the horse stalls.
• Cattle-proof the fence around the pond-to-be.

So that’s my list. Most of it I can do alone. Some requires the Hubbit’s help. But less all the time! Yesterday, for instance, he taught me to drive the tractor, thinking to set himself free from plowing. It was so much fun … until I killed it. I have no idea what I did, but I’m sure he’ll figure it out. Poor guy! I’m lucky he’s so forbearing.

Do you get antsy when the seasons change? What’s big on your to-do list right now?

 

 

Still reaching for that elusive high

Ketosis continues to elude me, It was so easy the first time I tried the ketogenic approach to eating, shortly after Thanksgiving last year. I wasn’t concerned when Christmas derailed me – I figured that was to be expected – although it was annoying still to be derailed several weeks into the new year. But I figured okay, I’ll just get back into the whole low carb / medium protein / high fat thing, and in no time I’ll be buzzing along on a high, burning up flab and feeling fabulous.

Not so.

Instead, it seems, my vile body is on high alert, making every carb do double duty, hammering me with headaches, cravings and mood swings, rationing out my energy in tiny little packets that take me nowhere. After two weeks of faithfully consuming plenty of fat, not too horribly much protein, and lots and lots of dark green leaves, I needed some encouragement so I stepped on the scale … and the number was UP. It was up a whole damn pound!

Is it normal to feel that I’m at war with my own body? I’m ambushed by Easter eggs and bludgeoned by depression and that thing our mothers told us (not mine specifically, but mothers in general) – that “you have to suffer to be beautiful” – well, according to all the messages my crocodile brain is sending me, that’s just propaganda. I have suffered mightily, and I have brought suffering upon Himself, and I’ve even not been especially nice to the dogs, and I’m still bulging.

So what to do? Do I admit defeat, embrace despair, accept that I’m doomed to a (probably drastically shortened) life of being in pain, uncomfortable inside my own skin, never to accomplish any but the most banal, foundational items on my bucket list? Do I shrug off the hours I’ve spent researching this, and pretend that the fantastic sense of YES I experienced just before Christmas was a silly illusion? Do I, in a word … quit?

Completely off topic, but I have to insert a brief aside here. I’ve mentioned before how much I love modern technology. Do you know you can find literally anything on Google? Here I was, bashing out this post, and it occurred to me that I didn’t actually want to write the word “fuck” – I mean, not that I don’t say it when sufficiently deeply moved, but it makes for lazy and sloppy writing. On the other hand, no other phrase said what I wanted to say as well.

Clearly, this was a good outsourcing opportunity. So off I went to Google, and I typed in “fuck that”, and next thing I knew I was listening to this audio by someone called Skrillex. (Why??? I mean, why be called Skrillex? And also, why would anyone choose to listen to this? Either way, fuck me if I know.) So anyway, that wasn’t good, but then I remembered that I recently acquired new headphones and subscribed to Spotify (technology! Yeah!) and so I’m now reformatting my synapses with Mozart’s horn concertos – yes, all four of them. (And for some reason I felt it was necessary to google “ear synapses” and … my goodness. Amazing! No – come back – you can go look at it later. And everything else on Google. It’ll still be there when you’re done reading here!)

After plugging a Mozartian horn into each ear I went back to Google for another go at the “fuck that” question, and contemplating the answers kept me happily googling for almost long enough to forget this post entirely. Then I found the GIFs, and oh how I hate when bloggers plaster their posts with these beastly things that jiggle about and distract me from the words – but aren’t they just nifty? Take this one, for example … It lacks the succinctness I was looking for, which is why I decided not to use it, but I know exactly how the ferret feels, and also how does one resist the cuteness factor? There’s not a lot of cuteness happening on this blog, and maybe that’s an area that needs work.

I was hung up for a bit deciding whether to let Snooki or Dave Grohl say “fuck that” on my behalf, but after I’d googled Dave I decided – without in any way being tempted to switch from Mozart to Nirvana – that I’d rather be represented by him than by some skinny bint on a “reality” show that I have no intention of ever watching. Apart from anything else, he looks more like me – not quite as pudgy but still with not a lot in the way of cheekbones. And the beard is yummy – on him, anyway; I tend to give my own chin hairs short shrift. Ha ha – you think I’m joking, younger-female-followers-of-this-blog? Just wait – menopause will get you too!

Which brings me back to my original point: the war between Me and My Bod. Thus endeth this aside…

Nope, I am not quitting. Rather, I am reviewing my options, revising my strategies, and reinforcing my range of tools.

First, the strategy …

Number 1: Love Myself. This is hard! Maybe I’ll settle for just not hating myself… and forgiving me my trespasses…

In a spirit of Moving On, I am forgiving myself for this most recent failure, especially as  it didn’t even taste good, and it left me feeling sick, although I’m not sure whether that was due to changes wrought by weeks of cutting carbs, or by my awakened conscience.

I also betook myself to Catherine’s yesterday and restocked my wardrobe … for the first time in about two years. Yes, it’s been two years since I bought clothes – because every time I think of doing so I think, “Well, but I can’t stand to keep buying things in that huge size! So I’ll lose weight and then I can go shopping.” Comes a point, however, when your underwear is disintegrating and the seats of your jeans have worn through and the holes in your tee-shirts are too large and too numerous to ignore (what causes those stupid holes? Moths? Fabric-chewing planned-obsolescence nanobots?) and you just have to say stuff it and go back to the damn Fat Lady Shop (because all appearances to the contrary I am SO NOT a Wal-Mart Person) and try stuff on and look at yourself in a three-way mirror and buy at least three of whatever fits so long as it’s on sale because you really don’t want to have to come back again too soon. And actually I found out that I had dropped a size – yah boo thumb-my-nose at the bathroom scale! Which meant that this morning, when I was getting dressed, I didn’t have to put on any of the scary new doesn’t-feel-like-me stuff sitting in shopping bags in my closet; instead I could fit into a pair of shabby-and-bleach-stained-but-not-actually-disintegrating jeans that I hadn’t tried on for a while. And then I hung up the new stuff, mixing it in with the older stuff so that I could get used to seeing it there and forget that it’s new.

So much for nurturing a sense of self-worth … Let’s focus on food.

Apparently I am exceptionally sensitive to carbs – so I’m cutting them out altogether, except for celery. Even my imagination isn’t wild enough to conceive of a situation where celery can be fattening. But I read a comment on a ketogenic lifestyle blog recently from someone who said she was, and I quote, “kicked out of ketosis by kale”, and here I’ve been glomming the stuff down in bunches. So I’m cutting out vegetables entirely, even avocado and the dark green leafy ones. I’m not doing this forever, of course; just for as long as it takes to get into ketosis – at which point I’ll gradually start reintroducing vegetables to see just how much carbohydrate I can tolerate. I’m also cutting out nuts, milk (alackaday – no more lattes!), and the delicious gravy Himself wraps around stews and pot roasts. (Yes, girls – I’m married to a King Of The Kitchen! It took me a while to get over my indignation at his contempt for my own kitchenly efforts, or to acknowledge how very much I dislike cooking – but I can now confess that I’m greatly blessed among wifekind!)

I am gritting my teeth, ignoring years of anti-fat programming, and keeping my fat intake high. Jimmy Moore’s book Keto Clarity contains several recipes for high fat treats … so, ugh, I guess that means I’ll be pulling kitchen duty after all. The benefit is that it doesn’t take a lot of high-fat snacking to leave one feeling quite satisfied – compared with sugary snacks that invariably seem to trigger a craving for more.

I’m also cutting back on protein, big time. No more protein in snacks, only two protein meals a day, and I’ll weigh the damn stuff if necessary to ensure I don’t take more than 30 grams at a time. Apparently if you eat more protein than your body needs it turns into sugar – and the amount you need is directly related to the amount you exercise. Because my overloaded feet and ankles hurt and my energy is still lacking, I’m not exercising a whole lot.

So that’s also got to change – which brings me to …

Second, the tools …

I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money, mainly because we don’t have it, but when I realized that getting into ketosis was going to be a challenge for me I bought the tool that everyone recommends: a meter to track my ketone production. There are three ways to measure ketones.

• Ketostix pee strips measure the ketones in urine. By all accounts these are pretty useless, because they measure only the ketones you eliminate as waste. As your body adapts to running on ketones rather than sugar, you stop eliminating them – so the more keto-adapted you are, the less they have to measure, leading to a false negative.
• Blood ketone meters are highly accurate, but they’re expensive and the strips cost around $5 apiece for the Precision Xtra meter, which is the one that gives readings at a level that are relevant to nutritional ketosis
• Breath ketone meters are new technology, but several experts, including Jimmy Moore, say Ketonix is accurate and reliable. That’s the option I chose, because although the meter cost a little over $100, it’s a once-off investment – no expensive disposable strips. I bought mine on Amazon but have just learned that it’s no longer listed there. A word of warning: delivery is SLOW. I ordered mine on February 21 and I could wait until mid-April for it to arrive – presumably because the developer is battling to keep up with demand. But the reviews were good, so it seemed worthwhile.

And then there is exercise equipment. Given that it’s too cold to swim, it hurts too much to run/jog/skip/jump/walk, and my horse will either break or kill me if I heave my bulk onto his ancient and saggy back, I’ve decided to focus on muscle-building exercises. Apparently muscles burn more calories (i.e., fat) than flab, even when you’re not using them. Also, supposedly, if you have muscles you have more energy. To this end I have bought a yoga mat and an exercise ball … and we have resistance bands from the time I needed physical therapy – I just need to dig them out of wherever they’re hiding. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll have to do more than pile this stuff up in our bedroom to see any benefit. Argh. Well, I’ll keep you posted … maybe.

Third, just quickly, supplements …

Although my experience may not encourage you to try the ketogenic lifestyle, just in case you do, you will probably need supplements at least while you’re adjusting to the new way of nourishing your body. I found this link helpful.

• Extra salt is key. You can add it to your food, but comes a point that just doesn’t taste good and I’m not sure it’s healthy. I take one Thermotab every morning – because if I forget, I feel washed out and weak by noon. It’s cheap and readily available, but there are side-effects so do your research. Most importantly, you must drink plenty of water when you take one.
• Green tea capsules seem to improve my energy levels. I’ve been buying them from Costco but it looks like they’re a lot cheaper online. I’m not sure whether it would be better just to drink green tea – haven’t had time to research this – but for the time being I’m taking two every morning.
• I take a daily multivitamin, although in time I hope to meet my needs from actual food.
• Potassium and magnesium are two essential minerals, and if you run short of them you’re likely to feel spacey, tired and ill. I’m taking supplements while I restrict my intake of vegetables.

And, of course, drink water. Just glug it down – it improves your energy, mental acuity and general bodily processes.

So is anyone else out there struggling to love and nurture themselves into a state of good health? Does your body repeatedly sabotage you? What works for you? Also, do you think I need to inject more cuteness into this blog?