Hey all, I finally decided to go ahead and start a new blog.

It will no longer be focused on dieting, however, I will mention weight and diet-related things at times. The main focus though will be about my life and what I’m learning.

I will come back in the few days and post a link to the blog… stay tuned!

Hey all! I appreciate the concerned emails – to those who sent them, thanks!

As mentioned in previous posts, I am not really planning not to update here much anymore. I posted here for three years – three years where I didn’t even know my own thoughts, didn’t know how to follow through on anything, held a lot back and didn’t trust myself. (I will still post the link to the new blog when/if I start one). I know my previous basket case of a life would make anyone wonder if I was OK when I disappear.

Nowadays? I’m learning to trust myself. As I shed the self-imposed protective wall that has been around me all my life, the weight is coming off pretty much on my own. I weigh less now than I have since 2006. Still a little ways from my goal, but I don’t think about it nearly as much as I once did. I’m wearing shorts this year, have a tan and am much more confident about myself, both inside and out.

Honestly? I have found my purpose in life, am learning to expand and strengthen my mind, am making tons of new positive-minded and like-minded friends and am growing emotionally, spiritually and mentally. I exercise and eat as healthy as possible regularly and have also greatly improved my physical body. The metaphysics class has been enormously helpful with all of the growth and improvements. As has AA. I’ve become a positive, vibrant person and am attracting all sorts of good right now. It’s simply amazing! I have people in my life right now that I couldn’t even fathom having before… people I’m learning from as well as teaching.

I went and got an intuitive health report reading in Springfield, MO a couple of Sundays ago. I learned about my strengths and weaknesses and have already improved much of the latter. My main issue was self-doubt/self-mistrust. (As was probably evident in this blog!) I also had a huge problem in speaking what was on my mind. Last but not least, I was holding onto some form of self-pity and fear, which was causing my facial swelling. Yep, you read that right. My sinus problems and excessive sodium/water retention AND previous high salt/fat cravings were caused by negative thinking patterns! I’ve since learned that our negative mental thoughts and beliefs express themselves in physical ailments.

I’ve been forced to let go of one negative and toxic friendship. You see, people in our lives are reflections of ourselves. If you choose to surround yourself with negative and self-pitying friends, you are choosing to stay in that frame of mind yourself. I had to let a good friend of seven years go because of this. This person was trying his best to keep me entrenched in the negative way of thinking I’d been in for the past several years. Once I finally let him go, my cheek swelling did indeed FINALLY go down! In letting him go, I let go of that part of myself. It was an absolutely amazing release of negative energy. These days, I’m attracting like-minded and positive people.

In writing this blog for the past 3 1/2 years, I didn’t always speak my true thoughts. I wasn’t always 100% honest here. I was in hiding.

Anyway, if I don’t update here for a while, please do not be concerned. Life for me has become a journey of love, healing, learning and growing. I just had to become ready for good in my life. Everything I’ve gone through has been needed to get where I am. I have an amazing support network just in case I slip back into old patterns. And sure, I have occasional ‘down’ days and times. But it helps to keep myself in a ‘learning’ frame of mind. Everything is here to be a lesson!

I haven’t decided how much of my personal life I am willing to continue to share with people on the internet, which explains why I haven’t yet started a new blog. However, I will make a decision one way or another soon. I appreciate the people who have followed my journey since 2007. I only hope someone – even one person – has been helped in some way. Perhaps my journey could be looked at as a cautionary tale. As in, speak your mind! Don’t be afraid. Trust your thoughts. If nothing else, I hope people reading this who are currently going through their own personal hell can see that no matter how bad it gets, things can and will improve, especially once the person is ready for it. Remember too that we all have karma to get through. Whether you believe it or not.

Growth can be painful, too. It hasn’t been easy letting go of the comfort that my ‘wall’ has provided. It has been painful and a little frightening opening up to people. Some days I want to run and hide. Letting down my wall has made me extremely sensitive to negativity, too. Nowadays I just want to flee from it. I know over time I’ll be able to deal with it though.

And… that’s it for now!

I had an exciting morning: when I got out of bed, I glanced in the mirror and noticed my stomach area looked even thinner than usual. So I decided to try on some Capri pants I had bought several weeks ago, that didn’t fit then. As a matter of fact, I had bought about 5 pairs (2 Calvin Klein and 3 cheaper branded ones) for summer last month because I figured I was down another size. At the time, it turned out I was not yet down another size despite the weight loss. So, anyway, this morning I tried on one of the Calvin Kleins… and they fit! Then I tried on all the other ones, and they all zipped up and buttoned with no problem. Yay!

Wow. So I’m down another size. That’s exciting. All my new Capri pants fit. And I now have a light tan on my legs. How amazing. Perhaps it is time to experiment with shorts? Not short ones, as I think I have some cellulite that I’m not eager to show off. But perhaps the ones that go down to the lower thigh area. If I do in fact wear shorts this summer, it will be the first time in YEARS. Major accomplishment.

The funniest thing about it is that yesterday I totally blew my diet and actually ate FAST FOOD (ick!!), plus today is the 1st/2nd day of my TOM! My stomach should be huge. But for some reason it’s slimmer. Must be from all the dieting and the more regular exercising I’ve been doing.

I love weight loss results! I will get on the scale when my TOM is completely over.

I still haven’t set up the ‘other’ blog I’m starting. I’ll get around to it soon. Tonight I am planning to hit the circus with my sister and niece. PT Barnum and Bailey are in town and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll have to remember to eat before I go though. I don’t want to be tempted by all the junk food that will surely be there!

Hey all, I have decided to start a new blog! It’s not going to be diet-related although from time to time I may share stuff about my diet, weight, etc. Eventually I’ll start posting pics over there. Basically the blog will be about life and my creative ramblings, thoughts, perspectives and my journey through life. I’ve loved posting on this blog over the years – so I will NOT be deleting it. I will make this blog read-only and keep it as-is. I want this blog to be here as a reminder of some of the struggles I went through from 2007-2010.

But the fact is, I want to both move on, yet get back into the creative writing that I used to do (before becoming an alchy). I’ve been a creative thinker and writer since I was about six years old. I won my first writing contest at age six. It was some kind of ‘Young Author’s Award’ for the school district (Norwalk/La Mirada) I belonged to in first grade. I wrote a short story that got published in their award book. Anyway, from that moment on, I decided I wanted to write for a living. That dream persisted for pretty much the next 15+ years.

Funny thing is, years and years later, I DO write for a living. Just not in the capacity that I had wanted or even ever imagined! I imagined myself a famous novelist or something like that. But instead, I am a blogger that only writes little blurbs like “So and so was spotted heading to the gym yesterday” and “OMG she looks so slim and cute and healthy!!!!!” And of course I write here about dieting, etc. But in my young years, I wrote tons of poetry, stories and even a young adult novel. None of which was published other than the YA thing – I never tried to get anything else published. Although come to think of it, a poem I wrote about “Missing Homework” was published in the school newspaper when I was in 11th grade. At around age 12-14, I used to write really funny stories that would crack up family members and friends. I miss that – I really miss expressing myself creatively in a humorous way. I did it all the way up until I was about 27 or so. Back in late 2003 and early 2004, I kept a personal blog where I would talk about my zany life and how crazy things were since I had moved to New Hampshire. (By the way, parts of that blog can still be found in certain archives on the internet. The site name was mindless-intensity.com).

So I’m going to start again in the new blog.

In other news, I signed up take a metaphysics class today. I am super excited about it. I went to the school today and talked to the teacher and another woman who is joining the class. We all chatted for over two hours and it was awesome. The class starts next week. I’ve never done anything like this before – in fact, prior to Dec 2008 (when my spiritual/religious beliefs began to shift) I would have never even considered doing something like this.

Anyway, I’ll post a link to the new blog here soon, as soon as it is set up and all.

Hey all, I know this blog has been SO boring lately… I haven’t checked my stats but I have a feeling there aren’t as many people coming here anymore.

Anyway, life is still chugging along. I’ve actually been under-eating recently, so I won’t go into details about it. I know it’s not healthy but everyone occasionally goes through it, although I’m pretty much doing it on purpose at the moment. I’ve been in a cycle where I’ll eat lightly for several days and then have a few days where I eat too much (but not a huge amount, probably between 2000-2400 calories). I thought I was PMS’ing last week but it turns out I wasn’t, but I am now. My body is still pretty messed up from all the antibiotics I’ve been on. I finally have my ENT specialist appointment next Monday. I’m going to see if they can prescribe me an antihistamine that doesn’t cause me to be drowsy or have other side effects. (I know, highly unlikely).

I had a breakthrough in therapy yesterday. Truth be told, I have been somewhat of an emotional wreck for a few weeks on and off and finally realized why yesterday. I have been unbalanced. Basically it all boils down to the fact that I have been acting co-dependent on the AA program, sitting there passively waiting for something to happen. I’ve been neglecting my spiritual path and such and relying on what other people told me and looking to others (particularly my sponsor, who actually fired me Monday night) for approval. I won’t get into details about why we parted ways other than to say that she was giving orders instead of suggestions and I had had enough. Sponsors aren’t supposed to tell you what to do or give orders. Anyway, I’m meeting up with another girl today and may take her on as a new sponsor.

Anyway it is extremely easy to get totally sucked into AA stuff and forget your own life. And once again (like last time, in 2008) that’s what I was doing. So it is going to stop. I will still attend meetings and work the steps and socialize but stop looking to others for approval and guidance. I mean, I know how to live life, I have been given an enormous amount of enlightenment, info and guidance this year through all the hypnotherapy and meditation work I’ve done. I just couldn’t put the bottle down (for long) there for a while.

So, I will now be attending 3-5 meetings a week. I have a possible spiritual/meditation class starting next week; more about that later (if it pans out). I am also looking into taking a class at a college. I’ve started to realize that I really want to get into the counseling/hypnotherapy field. (I know, scary right to have someone like ME working in that field? Actually I think since I’ve been to hell and back emotionally, I could help others. Of course it will take probably years of study, but I may as well start somewhere).

The Invisaligns are going great – I may be able to switch to my 3rd set of trays this evening or maybe tomorrow morning. I’m totally used to them now, no longer lisp with them and they are rarely painful – even when I switch to a new tray (which means much more tightening for a few days). My gums are a little sore here and there but nothing I can’t handle.

Not much else to update for now! I hope you all are having a great week so far.

Let’s see… time to update!

Weight loss has stalled a bit but I’m PMS’ing.

I’m still sober. (Yay!!!!!!!!)

I finally bought a patio lounge chair and have been luxuriating in the sun for 10-20 minutes most mornings, in order to finally refill my vitamin D stores as well as get a light tan. I haven’t had a tan on my legs in years, so it’ll be nice to have one this summer since I plan to wear lighter stuff. Since I’ve slimmed down more and have toned up I feel more confident about my figure.

I’ve also been working out on my bike and doing resistance training on my arms as usual. One of these days I’ll add swimming into the mix and possibly walking. It’s already been extremely hot here – well into the 90’s and even into the 100’s with the heat index. It’s going to be a scorcher this summer. I partly dread it but also look forward to it. I always eat more lightly in really hot weather, and I firmly believe that the sunlight (contrary to popular belief) is good for us, so long as we don’t bake ourselves. Sweating also helps rid us of toxins. (Please don’t take my word for anything you read here, do the research yourself. After all, I’m no expert on much of anything).

I find myself sleeping a lot better these days although I still have bouts of anxiety from time to time.

I hope you all are having a great week! I’ll be back to update sometime soon.

Just a super quick update… I haven’t felt like coming here to update lately but I am fine. Still on antibiotics, which are really killing my digestive system among other things. Facial swelling FINALLY went down. Found out I have no teeth infections whatsoever and no indications or signs that they’d been infected anytime recently. So the infection is just coming from my sinuses. Sigh.

The good news is that I’m still sober. Got my 2 month chip on Thursday (even though Tuesday was officially my 2 months). Today is my 66th day.

I’m still losing weight, still getting compliments about how much better and slimmer I look. And I’m already noticing my teeth starting to straighten out, even though it’s only been less than a month wearing Invisalign! Even family members can tell that my teeth are already looking better. I’m beyond excited. I’m on my 2nd set of trays and although they were really tight the first couple of days I had them in, overall they caused pretty much NO pain, which is a miracle!!! Especially considering the agony I went through for the first 2 weeks of wearing Invisalign. My jaws are apparently used to them now.

Anyway, I’m headed out the door for the evening. I hope you all have a great Memorial Day!

TGIF!

Not much to update on today. I’m still feeling better. Getting used to the Invisalign – had them in 11 hours overnight and woke with only very minimal pain. I’m about to put them back in but I need to floss and brush first.

The sun is out for a change today so I am going to go out and enjoy it.

Today is my 57th 58th (sorry I typed that wrong – Thursday was day 57, Friday was day 58) day of sobriety! I can’t believe it’s been almost two months since I’ve had a drink.

So… the scale has dropped another two pounds. I’ve literally lost about 9 pounds in the past several weeks. Not bad! I’m sure some of it is water though.

I’ve transitioned myself slowly back to a diet along the lines of 80% raw fruitarian. The other 20% of what I eat is vegetarian (mostly vegan, actually). I’m not putting any official labels on myself but trying to eat intuitively for now. My appetite has returned a little, but I’ve been heavily detoxing for the past few days. Today is the first day I woke up feeling pretty good.

Last night was crazy… we had tornado warnings and bad storms come through here. I happened to be in the middle of a meeting, and right in the middle of it, the sirens started up. At first we ignored them, but not for long because then the alarm bells in the center started going off. We all had to get into an inner hallway with all the other people and stay there until the “all clear”. I hung around the center for a while afterward because there was quite a storm still going, but finally took off because supposedly another round of dangerous weather activity was heading our way and I wanted to get home before it did. But I only made it a half mile down the street before the storm just got really bad again and I couldn’t drive. Thankfully there was a mall there, and I pulled under covered parking and went into the mall.

I waited it out a bit inside the mall, on the phone with my sisters to see if they could look online or on the news and see when it would be OK to leave, but then the tornado sirens started up again. Then over the loudspeakers came the message “Everybody please get into the inner corridors of the mall for safety”. Anyway, I later found out that the storms coming through had produced tornadoes prior to them hitting here, had rotating clouds and could have spawned tornadoes at any time, which is why the sirens kept going off.

Anyway I finally got home around 10pm or so!

In other news, my 5-day partial fruit fast in fact cleared my sinuses and got rid of most of the swelling over my sinuses. However, as of last night there was mild swelling over the area that I have had both a root canal and an apicoectomy! Which may mean this entire time that this has been caused by a root infection, which is what I suspected in the first place but was assured not true by my dentist! If in fact it is a root infection, the crown work I got done will have been a waste of time and I will probably need the entire tooth replaced and will no longer be able to wear the Invisalign! Very upsetting stuff, but I’m trying not to get upset before I know for sure what is going on. I have an appointment with an Endodontist next week and am also on their cancellation list. All I know is that I cannot handle being on antibiotics any longer, I am through.

Anyway, I’m going to try and exercise a little today. I’ve been unable to do so during the fruit fast because I was too weak.

Still doing my “fruit fast” as I’m calling it… I’ve had absolutely NO appetite whatsoever in the past few days, so I’m using it to my advantage. I am going with my instincts here and already I’m noticing such great results. My finger puffiness has gone way down, as apparently a lot of it was caused by sodium retention. My chin/neck has gone way in, my complexion has cleared, my skin is getting super-soft again, I am slimming down… and best of all, my sinuses seem to be almost 95% healed. Yesterday I got compliments from two people saying I look great.

I even wore both of my Invisalign trays last night and didn’t wake up in major pain! Just a little pain. I’m going to work my way back up to the required 21 hours as soon as I can – I don’t want to be wearing these things for the rest of my life, darnit! Today I’m shooting for 15 hours altogether (counting overnight). Don’t know if I’ll make it to that though.

Anyway, I’m still sober, on day 55 now… still in the program and going to therapy and hypnotherapy. The oddest thing happened last week. On Monday last week I went in for hypnotherapy to try and determine why I keep getting sinus infections (to see if there was a psychosomatic reasons). Turns out there wasn’t a psychosomatic reason because nothing came up. But anyway, I was in a great amount of pain that day, so we decided to also see if I could see what was causing it. Anyway, I ended up going back to a past life while under hypnosis, where I was a man standing in a cabin alongside a river. The man was holding an ax and was highly anxious for some reason, but I couldn’t get any further information out of it. (I was on so many meds that day so possibly that affected my hypnosis state). I didn’t know where it was or when or anything. Anyway, later on that week I was standing in the shower and suddenly remembered that he was a logger. I’m not sure how I remembered it while being awake! And to be honest I didn’t really know what a logger was exactly – I had to look it up online.

Even weirder still… on Saturday evening I had come home briefly to eat a very little bit before heading back to the conference. This was right after my 30+ hour fast. Anyway, I was sitting on the couch and suddenly had even more of a memory recall of that life… it just came to me out of nowhere! I remembered that I lived in rural Alberta, Canada, I was a logger and part of a logging camp and it was in the 1600’s. (1643 came up specifically). So I went online to look up that info and sure enough, there were loggers and logging camps in that area during that time! And I personally had no idea about that since I had no reason to have looked it up before. Crazily enough – here’s the kicker – one of the photos of a river in Alberta looked 95% identical to an image that always pops into my mind when I go to my “safe/happy place”!! I was looking at the photo with my jaw dropped open because of how similar it was to the picture in my mind.

Weird but interesting. I talked to my therapist about it yesterday and she said that it can happen after a person has undergone enough past life regressions. I’ve pretty much ‘opened my soul memory doors’ often enough now that I guess they memories will come out a lot easier and even when I’m not under hypnosis.

Other random and weird/interesting things have been happening lately too, but I won’t get into them here. (Nothing major, just notable!)

Anyway, I’m off to get ready for my car service appointment.

Yesterday I flipped my mattress over and spent most of the day relaxing on my couch. What a difference it made! I woke up with pretty much no pain this morning.

As for the sinus infection, things were pretty hairy there for a while. I had been on antibiotics for 8 days or so and still my cheek was swollen. I spent a great deal of Friday and Saturday at a conference inside of a hotel, so there was a lot of air conditioning, which didn’t help matters. I was getting desperate! So, I fasted from about 4pm on Thursday to late Friday night (about 31 hours altogether). Then all day Saturday, I ate very little fruit, a few crackers and not much else. Basically I fasted/fruit fasted for nearly 3 days. I made sure to drink a ton of water and take lots of Vitamin C, zinc, etc. And what a difference it made! I was apparently full of toxins (and still probably am) because I was detoxing like crazy. I was sweating, feeling nauseated and lightheaded (super lightheaded at more than one point), felt weak, mildly feverish, etc. Anyway, my cheek swelling seems pretty much gone.

Here are some other things I’ve been doing to help get rid of the sinus infection: I keep my apartment at 75 or 76 instead of 72 or 73, which means the AC doesn’t kick in nearly as often; sleeping with my bedroom window open to allow the humid air in; using sterilized nose sprays (non medicated) a few times a day; putting warm cloths on my cheeks a few times a day; using very little (if any) perfume; and last but not least, drinking distilled water, as it seems to get things draining more than any other kind of water.

I also lost some serious weight (well, serious for me). Everything has gone down, including my stomach, waist, face, etc. On Saturday night my cheeks were both swollen from the antibiotics and infection and I looked terrible and felt even worse. I could barely focus on anything or anyone and felt like I had tons of involuntary muscle spasms as well as some other bad feelings. For the record, I was on Levaquin, which is a very powerful antibiotic. Never again, that stuff is AWFUL.

All of this basically screams at me that I need to go back to my fruitarian and vegetarian ways. Remember last year from March to October, I was eating tons of fruit and no meat and very little packaged food. In late November that changed and I started eating fish and packaged food again. And it didn’t take long to get sick with another sinus infection. Last year around this time I was vibrant and healthy from all the fruit. Obviously my body can no longer handle crap food. So I stocked up on lots of fruit and plan to do what I did before for the most part: eat lots of fruit throughout the day, then have a healthy dinner with cooked veggies (even potatoes if I want them) and whole wheat grains and what vegan protein I can find. But this time I’ll be taking vitamins, and I’ll allow myself fish 1-4 times a month (only wild caught salmon) to ensure my hair doesn’t start falling out again. Most packaged food will be off limits like it was before.

As for the invisalign situation, I’ve barely worn them in the weekend because I felt it was all I could do to fight off the sinus infection. Now that 90% of my neck and shoulder pain is gone, I will try and incorporate them back into my life more and more often. The problem is that even wearing them for an hour at a time causes pain in my neck to start back up, including when I put hot compresses on my jaws, take hot showers and baths, etc. So I’m going to talk to my dentist again today and see what else I can do about this. I am absolutely beyond fed up of popping Advil and Tylenol like candy – it’s got to stop and is not what I want to do anymore. (As of yesterday I am down to around 3 Advil per day, not bad for me considering I was taking upwards of 12 Advil and 2 Tylenol on my worst pain days!) My psychiatrist prescribed me an antihistamine (Vistaril) that I started taking as of Saturday night. It is also used to treat mild anxiety and sleeplessness but is supposedly non habit-forming. He said I can take up to six a day but I am sticking to 1 before bed. I don’t know if it was a factor in helping out with my sinus situation or not, but I figure it couldn’t hurt so long as I don’t stay on it too long.

So far today I’ve only had a pear as I got up late. I have lots of melon in my fridge and apples, pears, mixed berries, oranges and other misc. fruits. I’m planning to have sprouted whole wheat pasta and spinach for dinner!

Two words sum up the past week:

Intense pain. Horrible pain, pretty much consistently with little to no relief.

Other than the intolerable pain, it’s been a good week! I have a really busy and fun weekend planned.

The pain is being caused by my Invisalign trays. Basically, the trays (when in) force my jaws to set in a position that they never have before. After several days of intense – and I mean excruciating – pain that started in my jaws and radiated down all the way through my neck, shoulders and back, I finally got on the phone with my dentist. (Until that point I wasn’t sure what was causing the pain!)

So we are trying to figure out a way to deal with this. I’ll update more about it when I get a chance, as he’s suggested a few things for me to do. As for now, it’s bedtime. I was woken by tornado sirens at 5am this morning (after a mostly sleepless night) and was frightened, not sure what to do, so I ran around my apartment in a panic, then got online, tweeted about it and then called my sister. (Not my best idea, I know!) Turns out something did come through but I had woken up after it passed. But since the sirens were on, then off, then back on, I didn’t know it until later.

Happy Saturday to all! I woke up with virtually no pain anywhere today. This makes me very happy!

I have a pretty busy day planned so this is just a super-quick update.

I’ve already gotten used to taking the Invisalign in and out and it doesn’t hurt as much when I put them back in. Yesterday I managed to eat 3 square meals despite the pain. Today will be the same. Two days in a row now I haven’t eaten past 5 or 6pm but have stayed up until at least 2am. Having the trays in really helps curb any snack cravings I have at night (which are pretty rare anyway).

Today is my 45th day of sobriety. If I make it through until tonight (and I will, God willing) I’ll have half of 90 days. Amazing.

I hope you all have a fabulous Saturday!

I’m in pain. Lots of it. My teeth and gums hurt. Could barely eat because chewing hurt. (I had a mango and banana smoothie and some yogurt). Sinuses hurt. Neck glands hurt from antibiotics. Back hurts for some reason I can’t fathom. Brain hurts.

And to top it all off, the pain is making me nauseated.

TGIF!!!! Things will get better.

I’m supposed to be driving down to my sister’s place in a bit, but honestly if I’m still feeling this way I won’t be able to go.

I had to succumb and take a narcotic painkiller. It doesn’t seem to be helping at all.

Grrr.

Oh well. Life is good. Things will get better. !!!

So… still haven’t made any decisions on the blog thing! But I will post this and keep it public. I have some things to b*tch and moan about right now and I figure this is the perfect place to do it.

Not only is it my TOM and I’m in pain and discomfort from that, but I got my Invisalign braces put on today and am in pain from that. And the icing on the cake is that I have swelling and pain over my sinuses… again. Same part of my face, same pain. Likely my 19,433th sinus infection of the year. Not sure what I’m going to do about it yet.

Oh, and it’s nearly 90 degrees outside and very windy.

Fun fun fun, I tell ya!

Anyway, the good thing about the Invisaligns is that you have to take them out every time you eat, and it is kind of a pain to get them in and out. Well, mostly only in the beginning. So it’s definitely going to cut down on my eating and therefore I will likely lose weight even faster. Not to mention my gums are already hurting – they are pretty tight! – and I have no desire to eat. I am not going to be taking narcotic painkillers for any of this stuff, so I’m going to just deal with the pain and ’suck it up’ as they say.

Despite all the pain and stuff I’m in a pretty good mood, well at least now that I’m home. Getting into my [black] car after it was sitting in the hot sun for two hours wasn’t fun, nor was sitting in traffic for 30 minutes. But I’m home now.

Owww!

I ended up only eating about 1350 calories yesterday. Not bad. Plus I ate very little carb food after 3pm. By the time I got home last night (around midnight) I just fell into bed exhausted.

Today I am feeling good for the most part and it’s been another productive day, but my anxiety level is unfortunately increased – to the point that I feel outright anxious – and I have very little appetite. I’m seeing my therapist though in about an hour so perhaps we can do a calming meditation together. Pollen is absolutely awful around here right now and my eyes are burning and my sinuses are starting up again, so I went ahead and took some sinus drainage medicine. Despite my BP issues I took something with pseudoephedrine, which was likely a bad idea but the last thing I want is another sinus infection, which seems to happen anytime my sinuses get clogged and don’t drain. Best to keep them draining. And as usual I am making sure to drink plenty of purified water.

Other than that I’m doing fine. It’s a gorgeous, sunny and warm day out!

I’ll try and update more later.

Well I ended up consuming around 1800 calories yesterday. Which is OK. The funniest thing is happening! I am continuing to slim down no matter what I eat, it seems. All my pants and capris are loose now, even a pair I washed and accidentally over-dried yesterday. It’s simply amazing. During the past week or so I’ve even had fast food a couple of times, which for me is highly unusual. Anyway, I’m really enjoying being able to eat pretty much what I want and still see my body thinning down. I have a feeling the exercise is helping enormously, like it always does.

I still refuse to get on the scale though. I’m definitely slimming down but the scale is probably around the same number, like it always is! I’ll get on it in a couple more weeks or something to check progress though.

The med taper is going pretty much OK – no major anxiety, but there is one unfortunate side effect occurring: occasional hand trembling/tremors, which I was warned would happen for a while. It’s not major, but it’s noticeable when I am holding something up or outwards to read or look at (like my cell phone) or using a spoon/fork, but thankfully it’s not consistent or very bad. Pretty mild, in fact, but of course I notice it.

I’ve also had a little more trouble falling asleep.

But I’m alive and well and feeling OK. Today I plan to eat around 1500 calories. I went and hand-washed my car today – great exercise – and I’m going to do 20 minutes on the bike in a short while. I would do more on the bike but I’ve noticed that excessive exercise or exertion seems to bring on the hand tremors.

Today is my 40th day of sobriety, which is pretty cool!

I’m going to check my blood pressure probably later tonight on my way home. Last time I checked it, it was 123/77, but that was half a day after I’d taken an A. (Not going to list the actual med here, as it seems to bring extra comment spam for some reason!) If I do take my BP tonight I’ll post it here. It’ll likely be a bit higher than normal due to PMS (which has always made my BP go up a bit temporarily) plus the med taper. We’ll see though… maybe it won’t be so bad.

I’ve spent the day cleaning my apartment from top to bottom, paying bills, doing laundry and now I’m relaxing a bit before I start on some 12-step work. I also have a couple of workbooks I need to start on that were given to me by my counselor. I got some decent exercise scrubbing, vacuuming, dusting, etc but will probably also take some time to do a 30-minute bike workout plus arm exercises.

I have a 1450-calorie menu I’m following for today and so far I’m doing great with it! And the overeating I’ve done this week hasn’t seemed to do anything negative to my figure, crazily enough. In fact, according to the way certain pants and capris are fitting, I’m actually still slimming down! I couldn’t believe it yesterday when I got into a pair of pants that I thought would never fit me after all that over-eating plus my (still current) PMS. And they fit comfortably. Simply amazing. But I still haven’t gotten back on the scale and don’t plan to for a while yet.

My depression has FINALLY gone away. Yay! I was reassured once again last night by others (with experience) that it is completely normal to go through this in the first few months of sobriety. I’m going to go through ups and downs and occasional depression and anxiety.

My plan was never to trade booze for meds, and I don’t want to change my mind about it. I am going to tell the psychiatrist this at my next appointment – I’m following up with him in a couple weeks to make sure I’m doing OK off the benzo’s. We were going to see how I was doing on the Topomax, but as mentioned in the last post, I’ve decided (after a bit of research, prayer and meditation) not to take it.

I have mentioned this in previous posts (I thought) but I’ll say it again: before becoming an alcoholic sometime in late 2006, I never suffered from depression or anxiety except on occasion. I had severe anxiety and depression/PTSD after my car accident in Dec 2004 for several months though. And small and short-lived bouts of depression over the years, never severe. So, I really can’t be diagnosed with anything when it’s all alcohol binge-drinking related! It would be ridiculous to go on a medication to treat something caused by alcoholism that will most likely go away if I just wait it out, stay off the booze, eat as healthily as possible, exercise and continue my hypnotherapy, counseling and meetings. All of which I will continue to do.

Of course, if for some reason I fall into a deep depression that doesn’t go away, I will consider going on something for it. Or if the anxiety gets so bad I can’t function.

But as of this moment, I am feeling just great! Today I got up at a decent hour, had fruit and whole wheat pancakes for breakfast, and just completed a 13.5-mile ride on my bike – one hour’s worth of exercise. (I’m still not overdoing it but I rode at a steady pace for the hour). I am pumped full of endorphins at the moment. I’m going to eat some pineapple and maybe drink a protein shake now, take a shower than head out to spend time with family, and later friends.

Hope you all have a great Saturday!

So, although I just updated a couple hours ago, I figured I should update again and be a little more thorough. I kind of just glossed things over in that last post.

The real truth is that for the past few days, I’ve been suffering from some pretty moderate depression. I won’t say ‘major’ because I was nowhere near suicidal or anything like that, just had no energy and didn’t want to do anything. To the point where I sleep a lot, don’t want to get out of bed or off the couch. It’s an effort just going to my computer to do work. I still forced myself to exercise a few days this week though and I’ve been attending AA meetings almost every day. (The days I don’t go, I speak to my sponsor and other people from the program to keep myself accountable and will sometimes meet up with them at night for dinner or something).

Anyway, I had a psychiatrist’s appointment this morning (that I left for right after posting the below entry). I told him flat-out that I’m not willing to go on any ‘regular’ meds, anti-depressants, opiate blockers, etc. I told him about my issues of coming off the Librium and was honest about everything. He knew my history since he works out of the same facility that I go for counseling and psychotherapy at.

Anyway, it ended up being a great session, he is really cool – unlike the last psychiatrist I saw, which was back in 2008. (Note that I said ‘psychiatrist’ instead of ‘psychologist’ – the ones that prescribe meds for the most part). I also told him about how I’ve been unable to control my appetite lately and partially blamed PMS. Anyway, he suggested I try a certain drug that is used for a wide variety of things – one that is non habit-forming, but can treat things like anxiety, cravings, excessive appetite, migraine headaches and even seizures. After some thought I decided to try out this medication, and he prescribed me a month’s worth. I’m a little hesitant to say which drug it is here, but if anyone is curious, you can email me and I’ll tell ya. (Or just ask in the comments if you want to know and I’ll reveal it). Anyway, the #1 side effect of this particular medicine is weight loss. It also reduces cravings for alcohol and drugs and such and relieves anxiety, so those are all major pluses. He gave me a very low dosage too, and if I don’t like it, I can easily stop taking it. I’ve decided to give it 2-3 weeks. The dosage is one per night before bedtime since it can cause drowsiness at first. (*See update at end of this post).

He also said that [unfortunately] mild to moderate depression, anxiety, brain fog and other issues are very common for the first six months after being off alcohol. So I may have a while to go before I feel ‘normal’, whatever ‘normal’ is. The depression and lack of energy thing will pass. PMS is largely to blame right now too, but it should be passing within another day or two.

I’ve learned that my darn nervous system is shot to hell from binge-drinking for those few years. Binge-drinking and constantly stopping, then binge-drinking again is supposedly worse than just drinking every single day, as it’s harder on the nervous system to keep stopping and starting like I was. Sigh.

Anyway, I want to be more open and honest on this blog not only for my own good but because I’ve heard from others that they appreciate reading about my struggles, as many suffer the same or similar things. So here it is. I’m now on meds. I’ll update and let you all know how it works out. I’m going to abandon my super-strict diet plan for now and just try to keep eating as healthily as possible. Cutting calories to extreme levels won’t do me any good and I won’t be able to stick to it anyway!

*Update: I decided – after lots of internet research – NOT to take the drug he prescribed. Too many people struggle with bad memory, nightmares and other side effects while on the drug. I wish I would have looked the drug up online before getting the prescription filled! Eek.