Maintenance?

Like most, I have lost and gained the same weight so many times over my life that I could never put a number to it. The gaining part took no effort what so ever. The losing part seemed like endless sacrifice. Maintenance? Hmm...now that was an interesting concept. From childhood on I was either losing or gaining...never maintaining. My body didn't do maintenance. Dieting=weight loss. Eating=weight gain. Those were the two options. 

So needless to say, these past 15 years of figuring out how to not gain the 120+ pounds I had lost back.. has been as labor intensive as anything I did to get here. My body is so prone to weight gain that for me, maintenance requires vigilance and effort. I wish I could say that my body was "healed" from being a fat storing machine, but that wouldn't be true. If I deviate from my normal controlled eating plan for more then an occasional meal now and then, I will gain. If I take a break for a week and  eat like everyone else around me is eating, including people who are not overweight, I will gain. And it's not necessarily the calorie count that is the issue, but the food itself that will cause the weight gain. 

Grain based foods and sugar are the welcome mat in front of my fat cells. My insulin spikes and every calorie gets locked away like squirrels storing nuts for the winter.  On top of that, eating them also awakens the sleeping beast that is appetite and hunger. Uncontrolled type 2 diabetics can have a voracious appetite that is beyond anything imaginable. As far as you body is concerned, it is starving, no matter how much you consume. Obesity is the natural result.  

It is my JOB to be mindful of the food I consume and I know that each choice comes with consequence for me, good or bad. Because I am diabetic, I have a built in alarm system that fires if I go astray for more then the occasional deviation from my normal diet. I will feel like crap! I keep my blood sugar and insulin levels under control with lifestyle choices, but when I choose something different, BAM! Diabetic Pam!  

It frustrates me to accept the fact that I will never be"normal", whatever that is. I'm still not sure how "normal" people go about their lives. Do they just naturally run checks and balances in their heads constantly to keep their weight and health on track? I know that's how I live now. I generally know the caloric and nutritional value of everything I put in my mouth and I keep a running tally in my head. I see other people eating breads and sugary deserts and know that I can't have it. Let me rephrase that, I choose not to have it. Do I want it? You know I do, but if I want to stay on this planet with all my original parts and be healthy, I have to say "No". That is maintenance for me.

Fat Time Of Day? Really?

I read an article this morning on Yahoo News that had these advertisements from 1970. I found it amazing how aggressively manipulative the food and advertising industries have been in the past, as well as they still are today. All they have to do is present their pseudo science "facts" and fill in with a few technical sounding words or theories and they can mislead the public. The fact is that we humans were not designed to consume vast amounts of sugar, natural or otherwise. We evolved on a seasonal diet of fruits and other plant life as our main source of sugar as well as things like honey when available. The abundance of processed sugar is relatively new and the effects have been devastating to our health. It was only a few years ago that the corn industry was making a huge public push to convince us that high fructose corn syrup was perfectly natural and safe..."just like regular sugar". Well..I guess they are right because they are both equally unhealthy. What are you thoughts about these advertisements? Do you see any similarities to products being promoted and sold to us today?

Confessions Of An Ex-Sugar Addict And Halloween Memories

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 10/28/12:

Halloween marks the beginning of the holiday season, mainly the beginning of the over eating of bad foods season! Most of you have probably felt obligated to go out and purchase large quantities of candy for the trick or treaters. It's almost like being given permission to have mass amounts of forbidden sugary heroin in your house.

I know that for me, back in my sugar eating days, Halloween was as exciting for me as it was for my kids. I will admit it here, that often times I would have to buy the Halloween supplies several times before the day actually got there. I would be one of the first to stock up when the stores started displaying candy with the justification that I was just getting a jump on things. Yeah...right. In reality I would go through that bag myself in secret and then go buy again...sometimes more then once. I won't even mention my thieving ways when I would raid my kids bags when they weren't looking.

I can't tell you how many rounds I went with this behavior each Halloween. I did the same at Christmas and Easter. I was a secret eater and in spite of the shame and sickness it caused me, I felt like I couldn't stop. I could always find an excuse to overindulge or binge. I could always make bargains with myself and say that I would get control and get my act together...tomorrow. Somehow making a formal commitment to myself to stop it all would make me feel better about what I had done.

Even being diagnosed with diabetes didn't stop me. In fact, I remember when I was pregnant with my last child at the age of 32. I was going through a divorce and due to my health history of high BP, heart failure and diabetes I was put in the high risk clinic at the hospital I was going to. I remember one time being so depressed about it all that on the way home from one of my check ups I stopped at the bakery outlet and bought 4 boxes of snack cakes. I bought them "for the kids" and then parked and ate them ALL myself. I was so deeply buried in my eating disorder that even knowing it was harming my unborn baby didn't stop me. I had been put on insulin with that pregnancy and oddly enough, in spite of my crazy binging I ended up losing weight during those months. Once I had the baby and went off the insulin I exploded in fat and gained about 50 pounds in 2 months.

Being trapped in an eating disorder is misery. I was never one to purge..just binge. Most people don't think of that as one and the same, but it is. If I'd had the ability to purge I would have, but my aversion to it outweighed my desire to do it...no pun intended! No one knew about my problem, or so I thought. I was obviously morbidly obese, but I was in enough denial to think people actually believed me when I said the condition of my body was genetic or unexplainable.

It's been 22 years since I had that snack cake binge in the parking lot behind the bakery outlet store. I know I did it, but I can't believe I did. Don't get me wrong, it was only one of hundreds of times I did something like that, but that one remains with me because I was not only harming myself, but my unborn son. It is considered horrible for a woman to drink alcohol or smoke or do drugs while pregnant. What I did was no less horrible. Because of my choices I was shown on an ultrasound that my baby was basically suffering obesity inside of me. His belly was distended and he was growing too fast. I was told that I would likely be induced early and that it could put him at risk for immature lung development and possibly even having to break his collar bone to deliver him if his shoulders were too wide. Still...I did it. He was born with an Apgar score of 0. The room was completely silent..no crying for what seemed an eternity. The doctors worked on him and finally got him breathing, but Brian likes to brag that he was born dead. I was not a bad person. I was not trying to hurt my baby. I was completely lost in my sick behaviors and had no idea how to stop.

I had been dieting since I was 2. There was never a time in my life that I was not obsessing about food. I thought that was normal. It wasn't until I was 42 and completely overwhelmed with a long list of health issues myself, and also seeing my daughter at the age of 18, 300+ pounds and getting ready to go off on her own that I woke up. I searched and found Cambridge again and put in my order that day. I didn't really expect my life to change so completely. I only wanted to save her from the nightmare I had lived. The fact that Cambridge gave me the ability to finally break free from my addictive behaviors is still something that I think about and I am grateful for every day these 11 years later. It gave me back my self respect, my health, my hope and brought my family out of poverty. It showed my children that no matter what, we each have the ability to make great changes in our lives.

I will not be buying candy this year. I will not participate in this holiday anymore. It has no meaning other then for the retailers and the poor children who are being influenced in nothing but negative ways. I find it sad that parents now feel pressured to spend $30 or more on store bought costumes so their child won't feel bad wearing something home made. It used to be odd to see someone in a fully bought costume, now it is expected. The fun of roaming the streets at night trick or treating has been replaced with meaningless "trunk or treating" gatherings or wandering the mall store to store, etc. What's the point? You child is left with pounds of candy which is toxic, no matter how you sugar coat it...again...no pun. Having a party with creative costumes and games seems much more positive to me. Now that my children are grown I no longer feel like Halloween is mandatory. I can turn off my porch light and pull down the shades and let it pass me by. My husband was hoping this was going to be a good excuse for him to get to have some sugar in the house, but it ain't happening. He is a triple bypass survivor and sugar is not his friend. Mine either.

This has been a long rambling post, but the board has been quiet lately (normal for being right before an eating centered holiday) and I figured I might as well give you all something to read. It's good for me to reflect on my past life. It reminds me of where I never want to be again and hopefully it might nudge some of you in to getting honest and real with yourselves. Make good choices!