Sugar... Oh Honey Honey

If I were like the other members of my family, my addiction would come to some illicit or controlled substance. I really consider myself lucky that this is not the case. Instead, I deal with having an unhealthy relationship with food. Which sort of sucks because I can't just give up eating cold turkey.

I'm going to oversimplify this a bit, so forgive me. My body has a number of cells that are insulin resistant. As in, they resist the effect of insulin to process sugar. My pancreas responds by producing more insulin. (which can cause my pancreas to eventually wear out causing Type II Diabetes) I have an excess of insulin in my blood stream, not all cells are resistant, and those non resistant cells in turn tell my body to feed it more sugar to balance out the insulin. The resistant cells are likely fat cells. The non resistant ones, the important stuff like my heart, lungs, muscles. I eat more sugar. I get more fat. It is a vicious cycle. (see a more scientific explanation here) Fun side note, excess insulin also causes production of excess male hormones. Hello hair!

Add to that an unhealthy relationship with food. I eat to celebrate, and I eat to deal with unhappiness. So basically I am giving myself an excuse to overeat all the damn time.

The solution is, give up sugar and kick my behind in to high gear to lose those resistant cells.

Missy asked this question on my post about the hairy issues, and I sort of want to answer it, because it is something I've actually given a lot of thought to. Since this is my blog, I figure why not do it publicly.

I wonder - and these are just thoughts for you to ponder, not to respond publicly -but if you've considered Overeaters Anonymous?

I have actually. While no one in my family has ever managed to maintain sobriety with the assistance of AA, it has helped. The part that unfortunately doesn't work for me is the faith one. Over half of the steps deal with God directly. I wish there were other common alternatives, but alas there are not. There are eating disorder programs however, and I am looking in to those along with therapy.

I also wonder if a program like Weight Watchers might help you set goals and keep that immaculate diet you speak of?

I have tried WW before, to varied success. Unfortunately the points program doesn't specifically deal with the limitations my dietitian suggested for me. You can get away with a LOT of sugar in WW and not have it effect your points. (they do a combo of cal, fat & fiber) If all I am watching is points, it doesn't work. The better thing for me to do is track my food and watch my carb/protein/fat percentages. I have not started doing it yet, that requires some meal planning, which I did this weekend. I start on Monday getting back with the site they recommended. (myfoodiary.com) I will track my food, good or bad, 6 days a week. I find it is nice to give myself a day off since there are times when I want to just go out to eat and not care if I can find nutritional info online. Especially since I love local ethnic restaurants more than chains. It doesn't mean I make bad choices, it just means I don't track.

I'm damn serious about the sugar thing. Since Wednesday I have had some really good dark (low sugar) chocolate, two bites of some stellar local ice cream (from M's dessert on Friday at Sen Yai Sen Lek) and a sip of A's coke. I have passed up free cookies, a churro from Boca Chica Taco House, and pastries from Sarah Jane's for A's birthday.

It is so much easier to just say no to everything then try to negotiate in my head what I can get away with and what I will have to give up later to make up for it. It is not 100 percent. They put sugar in everything. There is more sugar in "Healthy Request" soup than there is in just plain old "Select" soup. Take a look at two of the same product side by side, one regular and one "light". In many cases when they remove fat, they replace that flavor with sugar. Salad dressing is infamous for this. If sugar is your issue, you are better off just using a small amount of the full fat stuff than trying to do a full serving of the light. Better yet, make your own vinaigrette so you know exactly what you're eating. For the most part, I either make it, or try to find the least offensive option. No High Fructose Corn Syrup (for a good piece about what that does, see this) (and my reaction to all of that here), and as little added sugar as I can. There are sacrifices (sweet pickles), but the payoff is completely worth it.

One last thing from Missy.

The times in my life when I try to do things my own, on my own sheer will, are usually the times I fail. But those times when I lean on others and let them help hold me up? Those are the times I am victorious. :)


This is absolutely me relying on others. I would NOT have had any kind of success like I have without the support of people who read my blog, people who respond to my silly tweets, and the information I learn from other people willing to write about it on the Internet. That last one is why I'm being so honest about this.

I got some good news on Friday night, in the middle of that dinner. While I don't have the exact numbers to compare, I know that my insulin levels went down from last January. I'll know more at my next Dr. apt. It was just the encouragement I needed to know that I'm on the right path and that I can do this.

Changes

In my life, I have had pixie cuts, I have had long hair, I have had any variety of in between. I've even had a Mohawk. I have used my hair as a way to mark changes in my life. I have used my hair as a way to mourn losses. I have used my hair to piss people off. It has been pink, orange (I was trying for blond) and it is now pepper, with a liberal amount of salt mixed in.

I hacked off a good portion of it earlier this year. I had been growing it out, but it was getting scraggly, ugly and tangled easily. It was nice. I told my lovely stylist she only needed to leave it just long enough for a ponytail. It was right above shoulder length.

I wasn't nearly so concerned about ponytails today. It is about as short as it can go shy of a pixie cut. It is awesome. It is off my neck. It is something I can have fun with. It is wildly curly at this length.

I may, just maybe, consider coloring it. Not to cover the gray so much as turn them a fun color. Like blue.

In the mean time, here it is. To run tonight I had to do itty bitty pigtails and a headband. Small price to pay for a little change to go with the big change happening with me.

Wake-Up Call

I have PCOS. I am insulin resistant. I'm still obese. (BMI of 33.9) All of those things add up to the one thing about it that honestly drives me the most crazy.

I have hair on my face like a fifteen year old boy.

In April of 2007, with a just born M. I look like I could use a shave. Also, damn I didn't realize how bad the edema was from the pre eclampsia. Look at my hands!

For the last year I've been taking a medication that blocks some of the DHT that causes the hair growth. DHT is dihydrotestosterone. Too much if you're a woman, and you grow facial hair. Too much if you're a guy, and you lose your hair. Fun stuff. The medication, spironolactone is actually a diuretic used to treat high blood pressure. I've just been abusing it for its side effect. I don't take the full allowed dose, so the plan was for me to up the dose, if everything checked out.

This last Saturday I went in to my Dr. office for some routine bloodwork. Spironolactone can cause high potassium, which can cause heart problems, so one of the tests that I have done with some regularity is to check for high potassium. I'm not an easy blood draw, but I have never had it go so badly they couldn't get enough blood to do my tests. Until Saturday. I ran in to what has to be the worst and most obnoxious phlebotomist ever. She absolutely destroyed my one good vein, and made another four holes in the process of trying to get something out of me. The good news, she got enough of a dribble for them to do my fasting tests. Bad news, my potassium was high enough for the Dr. to call me somewhat panicked about it.

Since a stressful blood draw can cause your potassium to get out of whack (endorphins and adreneline FTW!), I requested a retest. I specifically tried to make sure that someone else would do my blood draw. I took time off from work so that I could get in as soon as possible (today), and I drove the 45 minutes from my house to their office.

Only to be greeted by the same vein mangler again. Guess who was the only tech available.

I lost it. I screamed and cried all the way home. I called in sick to work because I could not stop crying. If I can't get that test redone, which would now require missing more work just to possibly have the same result, my only option is to stop the medication, and watch the hair come back.

I have spent most of today trying to find information about options. I have IM'd my husband trying to talk myself down off of this ledge. I joke about the hair, but the reality is that it bothers me. Bothers me like I don't feel like a real woman with all of this hair. If I laser it off, it will grow new follicles. The other medication choices I have are out of reach financially. I'm doomed to have to grow it out to a length that can be plucked or waxed regularly, and I'm telling you, those mothereffers grow fast.

There is another choice however. One that I think scares me almost as much as a life spent both overly hairy and fat.

Diet and exercise. Like, lots of it. No sugar, no bad carbs, no junk food, no fast food. Just an hour or more of intense exercise five times a week and an immaculate diet. On the plus side, I would be able to eat all of those potassium rich foods I have had to avoid because of the drugs. On the down side, it would seem that now is the time to confront my demons regarding self worth, and food addiction. Sweet! I've been maintaining my weight, which is great. I've also been able to exercise more than I have since I was in high school. The real story however is that I have yet to completely deal with my bad relationship with food.

At least there would be shopping still, because the idea is that I would get myself down to a healthy weight, and quickly. Now if the Dr. would just call me back so I could run this all by her, I would go out for a run. That would be better than trying to forget there is chocolate sorbet in the freezer.

Side note: If by chance, my German heritage is also partly to blame for the hair, then once I am much much thinner, I could get zapped in the face for a nice sum of money. Awesome huh? Also, this site, though pushing supplements (that I might look in to, with the help from a naturopath), has a lot of good information.

Somersault

If I were a SAHM, or a WAHM, I am sure by now, at age three (crap, three!) M would have had her fill of classes and playgroups. It would likely be one of the only things keeping me from completely going bonkers. There would be ECFE (or as Julia likes to call it, Communist Playgroup), there would be music, there would be something physical to keep her from tearing up our very small house.

Instead, of course, I prefer to leave my child in the care of (very very capable) others. These others do pretty darn cool things. They teach her to put away her toys, to try to correct my Spanish for yellow (I swear to god kid, I know I'm right, I may have flunked it three times, but I know amarillo), and once a week a hippie with a guitar comes in for music class. She then sings songs that I only vaguely remember from the kid's tent at the Winnipeg Folk Festival when I was a kid. She also spends a state mandated minimum of 30 minutes outside climbing on a climber. It is good for her.

When she was younger I tried to be the overachieving parent who sends their kid to daycare, still does mommy and me classes, and works hours and hours of overtime. I nearly lost my mind. For one thing, there are very few classes for the under 5 set that accommodate a working parents schedule. I don't get this. For one thing, even if mom (or dad) stays home, wouldn't the other working parent want to do stuff on the weekends to bond with their kids? Not to mention, I don't need to do laundry, I have plenty of time to for tiny gym music geniuses right? I kid, but it is rough out there. None of the YMCA's near my house offered much in the way of options for me. The only things that were available, were seriously over priced. The city of Minneapolis does great swim lessons, and we live less than a mile from a city pool, but they offered no swimming lessons on weekends.

I sort of put it out of my mind. Otherwise it was going to drive me crazy. However, now that she is three, we have a number of other options available to us. Now there are dance classes available (including some downtown at Zenon dance company, yay!), as well as a wide variety of park & rec programs. Which is good for us, because the girl needs some lessons on coordination.

I am not graceful. I can climb a tree (I think I still can) and I can ride a bike, and use power tools, but I am not graceful. Not even some ballet as a kid helped that. I can can still walk in to a doorway despite watching where I am going. It is a rare gift, I know. It is a rare gift that I seem to have passed down to my daughter.

After reviewing all of the options, as well as my budget, I signed M up for a toddler tumbling class through the Minneapolis Park Board (love those guys). It started three weeks ago, and we missed two classes already, but we went on Monday. I also signed her up for the follow up class this summer. It is weekedays, around dinner time, but I can pack a snack, and A had dinner on the table when we got home. She loves it. She loves it so much that she asked me on Monday on the way home if she could go back on Tuesday after "workandschool". She loves it so much that I am pretty sure she will be heartbroken when it takes a break for a month inbetween sessions in May/June.

I'm not sure it will actually help her coordination, but her big feet are coming in handy for the balance beam. I knew we had them for a reason. ;)