Last week, I went to the doctor for my annual physical. The following day I went to the gynecologist for the same.
Between the two appointments, one of the medical professionals listed me as two inches shorter than my average. That led to my status as overweight being upgraded to class one obesity.
I have been struggling for months to resume exercise and return to healthy eating. I go back and forth with losing the same five pounds, based on what I choose to eat.
A lot of my issues with mobility and my heart stem from my extra weight. No doctor has said that to me, but I know based on how I feel and how my body reacts. I need to lose thirty or forty pounds.
About the same time my primary care physician quietly labeled me as obese, murmurings happened on the internet that suggested that the BMI was an imprecise and outdated model of determining health. The suggested replacement is a roundness index, which looks at how much weight people carry around their middles.
If I felt good, I wouldn’t care what they labeled me. But I don’t have the stamina I once did. And that has an impact on my activity which causes more issues.
I think as a society we should promote different body types and multiple standards of beauty, but if I know my weight causes a decrease in my quality of life, it is nothing more than denial to say that weight doesn’t matter.
Today I felt stiff, and a little achy, but I felt myself, and I hit the metrics at work. I’m heading back to the gym tomorrow.
I soooooo wanted to stop for a cold brew from Dunkin after work to celebrate making my numbers. But I didn’t.
I’m more or less down five pounds.
My blood pressure is much more normal now.
I finally got a good night’s sleep.
I still can’t really bend, so there’s no easy way to retrieve stuff from the floor, put on my socks and shoes, or slap on my underwear.
The next novel in the Fashion and Fiends series is at 40,000 words.
I had my second visit with a coach from Modern Health today. She’s adorable, and I have six more free sessions for the year. She saw Nala and fell in love with my naughty-feathered brat.
I am swimming in things that need to be done for Parisian Phoenix.
The rescheduled service dog canine therapeutic evaluation is Monday.
I have been taking my vitamins.
What I ate today:
4:30 a.m., one cup Supercoffee, dark roast, with half and half
6 a.m., first breakfast, Kind Breakfast bar, oatmeal peanut butter, mango jerky from Solely
8:30 a.m., second breakfast, Quest protein bar, birthday cake flavor, 3-4 ounces cranberry juice cocktail
11:30 a.m., lunch, stuffed pepper soup, diet Pepsi, one peppermint Hershey kiss
1:30 p.m., Hippeas chickpea vegan cheese snacks
4 p.m., Coke Zero
6 p.m., dinner, sprouted flatbread airfried chips with paprika, sprouted hot dog bun with half a chicken burger, dip made with various leftovers: chicken, brie, cheddar, kale, diced carrots, Buffalo cauliflower “rice”
(and about 36 ounces of water, working on 12 more ounces as I write this)
You know those workplace counters that say things like “X days since our last injury”?
I keep one of those in my head.
My last fall was November 3, 2022. The post-cortisone face plant. That was my last fall, until yesterday. Update counter. It had been two months since our last fall. The stumbles have been happening for about a week. I’ve noticed that’s how they “start.” I start to trip more. But I stay on my feet and I credit my workouts and my improved mobility and balance.
And then I fall.
Maybe the workouts, the chiropractor, and healthy eating do nothing to improve my odds. Maybe I would be a complete disaster without them. I don’t know. I’ve been taking my new medicine, even taking my vitamins (and I got battery-operated toothbrushes, testing the idea of getting a real electric toothbrush).
Yesterday, after a poor night’s sleep and a hard, stressful day at work (those details are recorded in an email to myself at work that I will not send unless the person who did not follow my accommodations says anything to anybody about me alerting my supervisor to her behavior), I came out of my garage, tripped over the stepping stone on the walk and landed after a corkscrew roll in the mud and concrete.
Watch the opening sequence of Netflix’s Special with Ryan O’Connell (season one, episode one) and you will get the idea.
I’m 47-years-old. I don’t like being face down on the concrete with my body in mud. And yes, my first thought was, “Damn, my sweatshirt is dirty now.”
I’m covered in minor scrapes. My hands. My right elbow (which still hasn’t fully recovered from the fall in November). My shoulder (though I can’t see to tell). My right hip. One of my left knee. Two on my right.
It shakes my spirit.
I also stepped on the scale for the first time since before Christmas. I had lost five pounds. I’ve gained those back plus two more. I keep thinking if I can get my weight down, my body might struggle less.
But then emotional eating sets in.
And so I ordered Wing Zone. Boneless wings and a BIG order of fries.
Happy Friday, my faithful and potentially new readers!
I started today somehow determine to clean my room and perform the weekly maintenance on my roomba that should have been done at least three months ago.
That took a lot of time and energy, especially since my rib is still bothering me from my fall last Friday. This is one of the many things that keeps life spicy when you have cerebral palsy.
But the unseasonably warm weather and everything fluffy kept me happy amidst my chores.
Then my silly Goffins cockatoo, Nala, decided to dive into her water bowl.
Silly bird
I received a text from one of my neighbors inviting me over for coffee, so I took my filthy self, my quince jelly and my last two English muffins and enjoyed some chit chatting with my other half (she owns the other half of my double). And Buddy, her dog, was handsome as always.
Buddy
Then I heard from another neighbor, Sobaka’s mom, that “cookie walk” could be scheduled for about 11:15. Cookie walk is a trip around the neighborhood where we visit with another neighbor’s mom and step dad as we collect treats for the dog.
We decided to do errands together with me as chauffeur. After a trip to the ever amazing Carmelcorn in downtown Easton (I did not go in— she who has a BMI of almost 27 and no income does not need candy), we finished our outing with a stop to CVS where I needed to grab my prescription and some food deals.
I came home and made some DiGiorno frozen pizza. Teenager #1 and I agree that the stuffed crust on the stuffed crust DiGiorno was delicious, but the pizza was lackluster. The four cheese DiGiorno was incredible.
As if that wasn’t enough goodness from today, I received a text from Zeus and Apollo’s new mom. She says they are doing well. And sent photos!
Zeus
Apollo, I think
She has no idea how happy her text made me. This is some of what she had to say:
I wanted to tell you these little kitties are amazing. They are fearless even around our other kitties. So far everyone seems to be getting along , they are very curious about each other. The little ones are still timid to get pets but took treats and played.
I had to face my pandemic denial today— due to the stressful nature of my last professional position, I’ve been stress eating more than I’ve admitted the last few months.
(And if you read this blog, you know I’ve been fairly transparent about my ability to each an entire Dominos or Little Caesar’s pizza. So imagine the late night bags of chips and the multiple doughnuts I haven’t told you about.)
Today I hit a new body weight high. And none of my pants fit. So it was sobering.
And I know part of that is my good intentions gone wrong.
Yesterday the morning started with breakfast with my dad and the teenager. I had coffee, a broccoli feta omelette, home fries, dry rye toast and cranberry juice.
I was proud of my choice because I haven’t had vegetables enough recently and I could bring half of my meal home for today. It was too delicious. So I decided I would skip or have a light lunch.
But then I stress ate a doughnut.
Then my dad and step mom invited me to the pub for dinner. My step mom wanted pizza so I thought I’d have a beer and a slice. I think I ate the equivalent of a whole bar pizza.
This year has not been one of discipline
It’s 7:23 pm and I’m watching the marching band rehearse so my daughter can drive home… I’ll make7,000 steps today but not my goal of 10K.
PART TWO: WARLOCK CRAFT BEER REVIEW
At Three Mugs Pub yesterday, I ordered a salted caramel chocolate Saucony Creek, a craft beer label I typically enjoy. Chocolate stouts and porters tend to be my favorite beers.
They didn’t have it. So I ordered a Warlock instead.
Warlock is an imperial pumpkin stout brewed by Southern Tier Brewing Company. It was smooth and not obnoxious in its seasonal flavor. And caused more of a buzz than I was expecting given all the food I ate.
PART THREE: CHICKEN BONE BROTH
Earlier— on Tuesday—while the teenager was still hanging out with my dad…
I finally turned off my crock pot that had been brewing the chicken bones of a whole young roaster I bought at Grocery Outlet on Saturday for $4. I made the chicken in the crock pot that day, returned the bones and skin to the crockpot and kept filling it with water until Tuesday noon.
I carefully poured it all out and squeezed all the goodness out of the now soft bones. I also started a pot of soup on the stove. The yield was nice.
PART FOUR: TRIGGERED
I started my day with coffee— fighting an unusual sluggishness and some unexpected difficulty with my menstrual cycle.
Last week, I had started thinking about my psychological triggers. I have long known that I have an obsessive attitude toward food. Not in the disordered eating way, but in a hoarding kind of way.
I don’t actually hoard food, but seeing a piece of fruit rot or having to throw out an out-of-date food product upsets me far more than it should.
It usually serves me well, but it backfires sometimes and missteps with food can make me unreasonably angry.
Let’s bring this back to that chicken— I didn’t need that chicken. I didn’t even want that chicken. But that was a huge roaster chicken for $4.
I made soup and froze it for the first cold day of the fall season. (I’m not even fond of chicken soup). I separated the white meat and the dark meat and froze that for future use. And I made bone broth.
That’s a lot of food for $4. Good, healthy protein. But… it’s not food I enjoy. So why?
But then this morning as I was drinking my coffee, I heard two people arguing. It was a loud verbal altercation. This is one of my triggers I forgot about— and it’s one I understand. My parents had a lot of verbal arguments and if I’m honest (forgive me for saying so Mom and Dad) if they had enough alcohol the fights could get violent and ugly. There weren’t that many over the years, but enough to create an even more terrifying environment than the mere alcoholism that existed in my childhood home.
So I surveyed my surroundings and couldn’t see anyone. My chest was tightening and my stomach dropping and that odd little internal tremble shook me.
These incidents were frequent when my previous neighbors screamed profanities at each other and threw objects and each other at the walls. It terrified me. They were literally on the other side of the wall, similar to my parents. When I didn’t stand there paralyzed and watch them.
I am not convinced what happened this morning, but I suspect my neighbor had some sort of television program playing in her car.
PART FIVE: THRIFT STORE
I promised the teenager a trip to our favorite thrift store. She bought supplies for her father’s birthday craft and two belts. I bought approximately three skirts, four pairs of business slacks, one pair jeans and one pair corduroys.
Since I can’t try things on, I got everything from size 7 to 10. Far cry from my normal 2 or 4, or my spare/ baggy sizes 6 to 8.
$43.50.
None of the professional pants fit. The red jeans (Old Navy low cut Rockstar 10) fit but are snug. The corduroys fit (size 8). One size 8 skirt fits, the other two did not. The medium skirt fit.
I’m sorry, guys. I also wanted to update you on Aspire to Autonomy, Lady Boss Entrepreneurs Club and some recent make-up unboxing from Dolls Kill and Target.com. But I’m wiped out and this is really long. Oh — and William Prystauk’s third novel appeared on Amazon.com today so now you can read the latest Kink Noir masterpiece and get your mystery/romance/crime/BDSM on.
Oh, God. I gained five pounds (and when you’re on the small side like me, five pounds is a lot). It’s cookie and alcohol and greasy food weight. It’s not going to the gym weight. It’s stress weight.
But the actual New Year Celebration was nice. I went to a local pub/pizzeria with someone I hope I can now call a friend. Apparently a large group of them (maybe connected from high school) just know to go to this pub on New Year’s Eve. Really informal but really comfortable and welcoming.
I drank more than I usually do, and was pleasantly surprised that I can still hold my booze. For most of the night I was drinking Fireball and diet. (See above note about being small.)
Yesterday the teen and I played Uno and ate too many of those cookies. I love UNO and I’m pretty good at it.
The teen and I even went to the gym today. We did primarily weights, but we went, I hit hard.
And perhaps one day soon I’ll open up about my adventures with Tinder and now apparently Facebook has a dating arm.
Interesting. I had a conversation with someone about the prospect of dating. I know I’m going to be extremely picky and have a lot of rules. So maybe I should focus on a basic social life and strengthening my emotional fortitude.
Angel Ackerman 