Me, Backwards

(Warning: Feeling sorry for self ahead):

Lately it seems all I do is chase things that seem just out of reach. I try, desperately, to keep up with Daisy’s out-of-box pee experiences, but since I’m not with her 24/7, it’s kind of a losing battle. If I’m in the room, I can hear her scratching on the carpet in the dining room, and then I’ll know exactly where she’s doing her business and I can follow immediately behind with a splash of Nature’s Miracle. But it still smells like stale urine, some days stronger than others.

I’m frustrated that there’s not more that I can do for Daisy.  I wish I could somehow get her to understand that injections are good for her, but she’ll have none of it.  Zip.  Nada.  Zilch.  When I took her back in for her checkup, the vet said not to do the injections if she’s acting like the spawn of Satan every time I try to give them.  As the vet said “You can only do what she’ll let you do.”  So I try to get her to eat her special low-protein food, and try to get her to take her Pepcid to help her stomach.  Some days it’s easy, other days, she turns her nose up at anything and everything. She has good days and bad days, and all I can do is watch and try to comfort her as best I can.

Speaking of out-of-reach, making change in my health/fitness/weight is just fuckin’ hard.  I’m trying very, very hard to do something that I can live with, so I’m being careful to eat healthy, whole foods most of the time, and to watch my portions, and to be responsive to my body (e.g., eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re not).  But as I learned when I was working with my doc and nutritionist team in Seattle, I have a tough time sometimes knowing what my body is really telling me.  I have such a dysfunctional relationship with food, and such a history of disordered eating, that it’s all I can do to know what the “true” cues are.  So I really don’t know whether I’m eating not enough or too much.

I’m seeing results from working with Noah (my trainer), and doing some additional exercise on my own.  But it seems to be maddeningly slow, at least relative to previous weight loss efforts.  I know that how I’m eating and exercising is sustainable, and that’s the important thing, and that I’m seeing definite results in my fitness level - I have measurably more strength and endurance in only five weeks.  I just kind of expected my clothes to be falling off by now, and while they’re absolutely fitting better, they still fit.  Noah says he can see a physical difference, and I know that if I look, I can too, but it feels sloooow.  Knowing that this is going to be a long haul to get to my goal weight is frustrating.

I’ve thought about going back to hard-core low carb, but it seems that since the first time I did it and lost 125 lbs, I haven’t been able to go back there, and even when I have, I didn’t see the results that I wanted.  And I need to remember that sustainability is the key, and that for me, anyway, going onto Atkins ends up being just a different kind of disordered eating - I’m obsessing about carbs and worrying about where I can eat, and what I can eat, and … yeah, it’s just not sustainable.

So instead, nothing is off limits, though I’m very careful about what’s in the house - so that treats truly are one-time things. Right now, it’s just a challenge not to go too nuts with indulgences, even though I (often) want to.  I’ll allow myself a treat here or there, and I’m so far able to hop right back on the straight and narrow path without too much trouble.  I find that to be more healthy and normal than anything more restrictive, even though it’s a challenge for me to constantly navigate the gray areas.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.