Stuck and Hungry

The curve of my weight has been steadily climbing for about four months. Actually, when I look at the long-term curve, my weight is climbing as fast as it came off two years ago. 

And I am continuously hungry. 

Strangely, what I am jonesing for isn´t the high carb stuff. It´s lipids. Fat. Grease.

As in bacon, butter, greasy sausages. 

When I grew up, that stuff was definitely not a part of everyday fare. My mother had had a bout with hepatitis C, and the medics had advised her to avoid anything fatty. So, family meals were definitely low-fat. 

And that was what I mostly stuck to, with the exception of a spaghetti aglio e olio phase I went through. Eating Low Fat was not difficult for me. 

So why should I suddenly want to stuff myself with grease-dripping fried bacon? 

Or fry my morning eggs with an extra pat of butter on top of the bacon?

Maybe it is an aftereffect of the flooding experience and losing all of my food stores in a single day. When my binge eating disorder was at its worst, the only way for me not to go bingeing on fast food was if I knew that I had plenty of food in the house. Which was one of the reasons why the losses were so big when the freezer stopped working. Keeping my food stores well filled meant security. Having them destroyed so brutally might have upset the precarious balance I had reached in dealing with food and eating. 

Or it might be my flirt with going paleo. Having things like bacon suddenly on the list of allowed foods might have been more than I could handle. 

As it is, there is still enough human fat on my body that there cannot be a medical reason for the fat cravings I experience. 

I definitely do not need to administer any lipids to my body, apart what would be needed for getting my fat-soluble vitamins in. 

And I do not need to provide my body with the extra calories all that fatty stuff brings. 

On top of it all, my vision problems haven´t cleared up. Today, I suddenly found myself experiencing what the French term "triplopie", meaning that I saw, not a double but a triple image in my right eye. As I have been born legally blind on the left eye, that meant I had to stop working and call it a day. 

One probable cause of that phenomenon, according to the web, would be a developing cataract. 

What I am suspecting is the air pollution problem we have at the office, as the problems only happen when I am there. 

At home, not even after a full day´s worth of reading and surfing the web, they do not happen. Nor do they in the morning, after having been away from the office overnight. 

As I do not think a cataract would cause a non-permanent impairment, the on-off nature of the problem makes me search the cause in the place where I experience the problem. 

Sadly, telecommuting isn´t an option when you have to work with paper files that are circulating in and out in a single day. 

Perhaps I should bring one of my warmest sweaters to work and keep the windows open as long as possible. And set my electronic displays to a bigger letter size so as to avoid straining my eyes.

Weight this morning: 86.2 kilograms. 

Feeling like as many tons avoirdupois. 

Julia

Sorely needed

October 3rd is a legal holiday hereabouts. It was also the last day before a predicted stretch of rainy and cold weather.

So, DH and myself decided to take advantage of it. 

We rode to a neighbouring city that is situated in a river valley, surrounded by steep hills, and there we went for a long hike. As such things go, one should never underestimate the number of hills to climb before reaching one´s destination. Which is what happened to us. Instead of a leisurely stroll, we found that we had to climb steeply upwards, which made for a good bit of exercise. My fitbit afterwards told me to the equivalent of 94 storeys climbed...and about eleven kilometers (some seven miles) distance covered. 

I know, regular hikers would scoff at that, but for me who has been lacking way too much exercise this year, it´s a reason for a bit of pride. The sore legs I have on the day after are proof that I really did get exercise on that hike.

One surprise awaited me when coming home. We hadn´t had lunch, so I felt ravenous. But when dinner was ready, I could only eat half my usual portion before feeling sated. 

There must be something to the theory that exercise suppresses the appetite.

Weight this morning: 84.9 kgs (187 pounds). 

I keep watching the carbs, and hope that the weight rend has changed back to "downwards" again.

I lost too much time on this stupid regaining thing already. 

Julia

Accepting What Is

I won´t enter my fifth decade as a normal-weighted person, no more than I entered my second, third or fourth. That is, by now, glaringly obvious. 

I haven´t even been able to stop gaining, even though is has slowed down, at least. But that body of mine has decided not to react to any attempts at getting it to start recondensing again. 

Almost 86 kilos, and back to a BMI of 31.4. 

Of course, I do search for what it might be that makes my body cling to that weight. Overeating it isn´t. I haven´t been eating beyond the point of being stuffed even once. No desperate binges like when I first gained all that weight.

If there is such a thing as an innate wisdom of our bodies, why does mine decide that it better be a lot heavier than what I would like to be living in?  It´s true, I have a stressful job and a busy private life. But what good are almost forty pounds of extra weight to drag around when it comes to coping with everything? 

Admittedly, being fat was like having an elephant´s hide suit of armor. Losing some of that fat meant feeling more exposed. But by what subconscious quirk should I ever want the pain that came with the weight back? And I´m not just talking about the physical pain of obesity, the feet tha kept hurting after a few steps, the back that kept aching, or all the things I could not do when fat. I´m also talking about the lack of respect, the sneers, the invisibility. 

My head doesn´t want that all back. Then why should my body? 

I am still at about 24 percent less weight than I started out at. Compared to statistics that claim you´re already a success if you keep just ten percent off, I am still ahead. But I do have to find out what really drives this regain before I slip back even further. 

Right now, I haven´t got a clue. 

Keep on keeping on....

Julia