25 June 2007

Patience is a virtue (Happy Post)

Hey guys. Sunday night is my weigh in night and last night I was 1kg lighter than my last recorded weight!!!! I know I've been whingeing and all, and that a lot of the loss may be muscle mass because I haven't been exercising due to illness but hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Isn't it funny at the beginning of this week I was going on about how I couldn't lose weight and therefore justifying an ice cream binge. It's so stupid. All the time I spend whining about how hard it is to lose weight would have me skinny by now. And yes, I know I haven't kept to my commitment to stay off the scales. I'm gonna try to keep off them for one week at a time. I think a month just isn't going to happen at this stage.

The amazing thing is that this is the lowest I have been since my last big diet. This is the threshold. 84kg was "around" the lowest, but 83kg is it. I made that a few years ago and bounced straight back up to 88kg. God please keep me from doing that again. So lets celebrate and be patient

23 June 2007

Meetings, Laryngitis, and a scale that just won't move

On Tuesday this week I went to my first face to face meeting in a long time. I'm very proud of myself because it is very difficult for me to get there.

It was pouring rain,
there was a storm warning,
I needed to take a 1 hour bus ride
and then call a taxi to get there,
and I was pretty angry at the local leader...

so I had lots of excuses not to go. But I did go, God rewarded me by making sure that there was actually someone there who could offer me a lift to the next one. That means I might actually be able to go to face to face meetings regularly. Yeah! The face to face leader knew that there were people who came from my direction, and I knew there were too. But she didn't think it would be fitting to give them my phone number and ask them to give me a lift. In any case, the meeting was good.

I personally, find online meetings just aren't the same. I get distracted so that I can't really find peace and serenity, and there's no real sense of community that develops.

But I am angry at God, because now I have laryngitis. My mother took the opportunity to tell me about five times within one hour that I shouldn't have gone out at night. I asked her if she was purposely trying to annoy me for her own enjoyment. She acted all righteous and wounded. Well...it seemed like a logical explanation to me.

Honestly, I have been working so hard and trying my level best at this program, and how does God reward me? With about 3 weeks of cold/flu/laryngitis. I was just getting over one bad cold, and next but I got laryngitis. I've lost heaps of muscle tone because I haven't been able to exercise and I haven't lost any weight because I've been sucking on sugary cough lollies. But what am I supposed to do?

On the bright side, I went to see my doctor for the first time in two months. Didn't he get a pleasant surprise! I had lost 9kg since I last saw him. I took an OA pamphlet and gave it to him and he was interested. So hopefully he'll be able to recommend it to future patients.

The problem is that 84kg is about the lowest I've been since high school, and 16kg is the most I've ever lost. Now my brain just has erected a huge psychic barrier that I've got to get past.

17 June 2007

Pictures of Compulsive Eating: The Early Years

Ever since I read in the Brown Book about someone collecting pictures to document their history of compulsive overeating, and since I got up to this in the 30 questions I have wanted to post a photographic history on my blog. With everything else that has been happening I haven't had the chance to do it yet. But here's the first installment.


I don't remember much about those early years. I do know that I my birth weight was birth weight of 3260g or 7lb 30 oz. This is not particularly high in a normal birth, but it is very high for a twin, and was considerably larger than my sisters 3150g or 6lb 15ozs, despite the fact that I was 1.5cm taller than her. This might not seem important, but there is data linking high birth weight to obesity later in life. I have also always carried around guilt about being the "dominant twin" and starving my sister in the womb, and stopping us from being born so that she was in trouble before the birth. I know this is irrational, but that's how I feel.

Most importantly, it shows how from the very beginning my identity as the "chubby one" was established. That is what I always was. My twin sister was always incredibly skinny and petite, bordering on underweight, and I was bordering on overweight. I can't ever remember being made to feel bad about my weight at this time. Most of the time I was proud of the fact that I was in bigger sizes in clothes and shoes.But it doesn't really go with the fairy princess image that you want at that age. I always felt like a clumsy oaf. This was partly due to my undiagnosed neurological disabilities. But that doesn't change my experiences.


There were all the usual things that can set us up for a bad relationship with food: food being associated with good times at grandma's and my birthday, going out to eat nice food being a very special treat because we were poor and couldn't afford it, My Mum always going on about not having enough food to eat. I did the naughty things that today would be associated wtih a compulsive eater: pinching a treat here or there, looking forward to eating at parties and at my grandma's house, etc. These are all things kids normally do. In fact, my mother tried her best to help us develop healthy habits. We were never rewarded with lollies, instead we were rewarded with dried fruit, but still the assocation was set up. I can't say that I had an early childhood particularly conducive to compulsive eating.

But there were warning signs of a genetic predisposition even at that age. One thing that I loved and was play dough. They put salt in home made play dough to make it distasteful to children but it wasn't distasteful enough to me. I used to regularly eat play dough, even when we were out at Sunday School or Play group. Even this could pass as normal, but what was not normal was the lengths i went to to get my salt fix. I would eat play dough even if the other kids were watching and laughing at me; I would sneak play dough to my room and keep it in the drawers for later. I even went through my drawers after months and months, found stale play dough, and proceeded to eat it.

Someone in the Brown Book said that they were born a COE, and it looks like I was too. Whenever I don't feel powerless I think I should just think about playdough.

16 June 2007

Parents part 2

Ok I just went to apologise but it didn't work out. The issues with my parents are HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. I blame them for the way I am now. I know I shouldn't but I do. My mother is so hurtful and annoying. My sister hardly speaks to her these days. But according to her, everything is always everyone else's fault. The fact my sister doesn't speak to her is my Grandma's fault. The fact that I am screwed up is my school's fault. She is the queen of guilt trips and emotional blackmail. Of course she has a wonderful side but I don't really feel like writing about it right now. Now she's going to be moody all night and I just want to crawl into a hole and hide. But I have work to do. So I'm gonna have to dry my eyes and get on with things. It's not fair!!!

Parents and Guilt

My parents drive me crazy sometimes! I feel guilty anyway about still living with them. I'm 22 I should be out of their house. I will be soon. I sure hope I will. Not only that, but they are impossible to communicate with. Here are few things that my parents have done to annoy me today
1. My dad was on the phone to my grandma in hospital and he hung up the phone before I got a chance to talk to her. He said that he didn't know I wanted to talk to her. I mean has he no common sense?
2. My parents always make empty the cat litter. It's not my cat. It's my sister's cat, but when she got married and moved into a flat it stayed with us. Now it has become my job to clean up any gross messes that the cat makes. I don't know how it became my job. It just did. it doesn't seem to matter that I might not want to do it.
3. My mother will never admit that she is wrong.
4. My mother always yells at me like I'm a dog and I've asked her not to do that over and over again, but she doesn't stop.
5. There are never enough sheets to fit my bed. So today I pulled all the sheets out and left them on the floor in protest.
6. Mum always calls me from the other end of the house when I'm in the middle of something else. Today when I was getting dressed she called me out of my room at least 3, I think maybe five, times! I have no peace. Sometiems I just need peace to concentrate on stuff.

I admit that I have been annoying and incredibly grumpy today. But I don't want to admit that to them because they'll take it as a vindication of all their own meanness towards me. If I apologise then they won't be forced to think through their own behaviour. Does that make sense. I sooooo don't wanna do steps 4-9

15 June 2007

ADHD is a REAL and ....(rest of sentence deleted due to offensive language)

Oh I am soooooo frustrated right now! I left my wallet in my study room and then I wanted to go home and I got to the bus stop and found that I didn't have my wallet. And of course at this time of night during exams on a Friday, the building is well and truly locked, so I had to trudge back and call security and get them to open the building and let me in to get my wallet back. But, by the time they arrived I had missed my bus, so I had to call my parents and get them to pick me up. It wouldn't matter so much if it didn't happen to me on a regular basis. But it does happen to me on a regular basis. By regular I mean I leave my wallet behind at least once a month. It is so humiliating but no matter how hard I try I just can't keep it safe. I'm just so worried about my life. How will I ever manage in the real world with this problem. Oh yeah...and any **&(#*$()#*$()# who says ADHD isn't real should come and live in my life for a little while and then they can #*($)#($*#() go on TV and say all their (#()#$*)(#$*() about people who take medication being druggies or something #()*$)#($*()#*90 you all! And as for you, God, where were you? You want me to trust you with my life? Well then how about showing me you can fix it? Ok you guys probably think I'm flipping out over nothing. But believe me, this is not nothing!!!! It's nothing when it happens to someone once a year. The whole reason I came up to uni today was because I left my mobile phone there on Tuesday night. It is just so embarassing. Ever since I was a little girl I have been in trouble for losing everyhting. Now I'm an adult it should stop. I just hate it sooooo much. It's not fair! How humiliating do you think it is not to be able to look after your own things? Its even more humiliating when people don't believe there is anything wrong with you. God what are you doing? I swear you hide my stuff on purpose!!!!!

Welcome back me.

Yes I was sick with a cold and lazy the last week or so and that's why you haven't heard from me. I'm still very busy with uni. But I know I need to work the program or I will get sick again. I will write more from now on. But first things first. In answer to the question as to how I got my blog to look pretty (and thanks for asking I'm kinda proud of my pretty blog)

It's actually quite difficult to do, but here are the basics:
1. Sing into your blog and go to the "Template" section
2. The easiest way to change the appearance of your blog is to use the "page elements" section. You can add a lot of pictures and links and things here. You can also change the picture behind Your heading (ie. I have a picture of footprints in the sand behind "Foodfairy's Journey to Freedom".
- simply click on the word "edit" and you will see a place to put the image. Images are relatively easy to find. Personally, what I do, is find free images, save them, then upload them to "Photobucket", which is a free image hosting site. I'm a bit nervous about uploading them straight from the computer. You usen't to be able to do that on blogger, but I think you can now.
3. If you want to change anything else, then it gets tricky.
-First find the picture you want to use, and upload it to a free web hosting site. You will not be able to use pictures which are simply in your computer.
-Second, Go to "template" then to "edit html"
- SAVE YOUR TEMPLATE in case you make any mistakes
-Scroll down until you come to the section that says "global".
-In this section of the template code, there will be little sets of code for each of the sections of the blog. In each of these sections there will be a line saying "background url", followed by some brackets.
- Insert the full web address of the picture that you want into these brackets. For example, the code for the glitter background behind my posts is this:

background: url(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x67/loginless/glitter_background_12-1.gif)

-After this you may need to play around with the code to get things exactly the way you want and this is quite easy using preview. I had to change the margin and "repeat" settings in mine. I hope this helps guys

04 June 2007

In Search of the Endless Summer

Congratulations to all my northern hemisphere readers on the beginning of your summer. Unfortunately, that means that all the lovely warmth and sunshine that we had down here in Australia has now fled north...and I want it back!!!. I am especially annoyed because my body appears to be doing it's level best to give the winter a proper welcome by coming down with a cold. I try to be good when I feel myself coming down with something, you know, go to bed, get plenty of rest, vitamins, echinacea herbs, water and citrus fruit. But I wonder how good that really is, because it often tends to mean that the "beginnings" of the cold hang around for ages without going anywhere. I wonder whether I should just plunge into things and then if I am getting a cold I'll know it and I can get it over with!

I am one of those unfortunate people who does NOT lose weight when I am sick. I didn't even lose weight when I had four wisdom teeth out! Oh no...I fell for the age old fallacy that "if I'm just eating fluids then I won't put on weight"...hmmm a litre of fruit juice, litres and litres of ice cream, jelly (US jello)..all those don't have any calories in them, do they?. Plus, being sick means no exercise. That makes sense of course, since my body needs rest. But it's a pain. I really don't know how to solve this problem, since I really think that if I am trying to fight off a bug I should be making sure my body gets as much nutrition and rest as possible.

Now...for those of you who actually follow the weight count etc, you may have noticed that, despite my well-intentioned pledges, my weight loss counter did move this week. That's right, I did weigh myself, even though I said I wouldn't for a month. In all fairness to me, I did go a whole week without weighing myself which is the longest I've done whilst following the program. So I have made progress. I am gradually learning to trust God and not the scales or the food, but it's much much harder than I thought.

Anyway...enough moping, because if you noticed that the loss counter had moved you may have noticed that it moved in the RIGHT DIRECTION!. I've lost another half kg (1lb)! Ok, so it's not as much as I would like, but considering that I ate off plan a little and tha I haven't been able to exercise, and that 0.5kg weight loss per week is considered a very healthy target by nutritionists, I think I'm doing well. I'm into record territory now! The most weight I've ever lost is 13kg...that is, the most weight I've ever lost before is 13...now I'm up to 14!

So I think now I'll try for 2weeks instead of a month between weigh ins. That is easier.