Ride the Wagon

You can imagine where I've been for the better part of a year - eating this and that, screwing around with diet and exercise, suffering grief, being angry, making myself too busy to pay attention to my grief...you name it. Then I shaped up again, decided to be "regular" and go the controlled diet and exercise routine. I lost a little. I gained a little. I lost a little. I plateaued. Calorie counting wasn't working for me...so I spiraled right back into carbs-loading and half-assed caring about myself and my weight.

In the back of my mind, though, there is this image of my mother lying in her hospital bed, alone but for a single roommate, with no one to help her get up and go to the restroom. It is a life she accepted because she was defeated by her diseases. It is a life I yelled at her for living. I cried at her for giving up. I begged her not to die. She wouldn't do anything - couldn't do anything - to help herself. It was too late. I didn't believe it, but she did. She argued no...but she had to believe it to resign to the arguments of rehab workers refused to lift her out of bed - it took too many people, she was too heavy, required an electronic lift, yadda yadda. Every time I fought for her, she fought against me. Why?

Why couldn't she just fucking help herself?

At the time I was doing my "damndest" to live a better life - strictly low carb, seeing amazingly great results. I didn't get why she didn't just STOP hurting herself by not trying.  When she died, I was torn up. I hated her. I hated me. I hated fat. I hated disease. I hated my family. I hated mom's friends. I still have a lot of anger I am working through because I miss her SO much and her death feels like a needless, wasteful, horrific tragedy....like murder or suicide.

I've been seeing the same counselor for my own weight loss issues. Like I said, I let go of everything I worked hard to achieve after my mom died. I regained 30 of 50 lost pounds. I have to start over. Again. I hate starting over again. I hate that I quit.

My counselor showed me this:





In this I see how I treated my mother. I see how some people probably look at me. I see how it's possible she could not help herself. I see how I HAVE to help myself before I suffer the same fate. I have to get back on the low carb wagon and ride it like there's no tomorrow. There may not be.

Break Down and Break Through

My latest attempt to Live Well was hideous and embarrassing and absolutely essential. Read on!

Responsible Me

What a wallop I took when I went north to revisit my mom's house in April. Imagine the desolation of being inside the house you grew up in without the main components: the people who lived there, too. A house without its family is a very empty space.

Add to this the insult of seeing the house my parents cared about trashed by a freeloader who wouldn't go until I forced them, six months after mom's death, after they lived there against even her final wishes and broke her house rules entirely. Yeah.

Imagine the anger that consumed me due to the outright lack of respect for my mom. Toss in some lies about my personal character (generated by utter shit the freeloader said to anyone who would listen to their gossip.)

Pour in the unshakeable feeling of helplessness. Stick the pot on a stove til the unattended mixture comes to a boil. Check to see if burned. Call the recipe "I hate my family," then feel sorry for yourself, ostracize yourself from them (as much as possible) and drop away from working toward your private achievements for the next few months. Mope. Fuss. Cry. Hate. Flair up. Soothe yourself with boredom and neglect.

But, eventually, you're going to be twenty pounds heavier and the stuff you worked for will start to feel impossible to attain. And then you're going to come to the most uncomfortable conclusion ever: You're responsible for all your shit. Your mood, your life, your schedule, your body, your attitude, your home, your surroundings, your love. The single saving grace in the hell of realizing you are completely alone in the darkest of times is that it ends with a flourish.

I am a month and a day away from having to say, "My mother died last year."  Every day that closes in on June 24th brings that pang of "she's not here" that cannot be conveyed to anyone who hasn't felt a loss of this magnitude.

I've had so many emotions and pity parties and bounce-backs and moments of determination - really been all over the spectrum of high highs and low lows - just trying to get back to good. I was doing SO good in just everything and my love for my family was strong, vibrant, unbreakable I thought.

Today I struggle to forgive. I wish to forget. Yet God made me one of those realistic honest-to-a-fault people who can't pretend everything is well when it isn't. I ache to let go of responsibility that doesn't belong to me - stuff I keep obsessing over like my mom's house and belongings and what's going to happen and why isn't anyone helping and how can I save it and on and on and on. I'm not responsible for any of it.

I'm barely responsible for -me- because I spend so much energy trying to be responsible for my mom, my cousins, my uncles, my not-siblings, the bank, the government... when I'm not supposed to be. The past few months have been a hard lesson in learning what really is for me to do:

Take care of myself.
Raise my daughter.
Honor my mom however I can.
Respect my family members.
Take care of my home.
Enjoy my life.
Be still.

I am happy to share that I'm coming out of the long funk with better focus and understanding. I am still sad. I still feel so much pain when I think of "home," but I've gained knowledge that I can only be grateful for and try to keep in mind from this time onward: I matter. I matter to me. Fuck. all. else.

The Strange Changes

"Dear God, never again." It sounds like post-party anguish when you can't count how many shots of whiskey you put down, but are convinced you will not so much as look at whiskey again. That's how I felt by the end of the day of the Highland County Maple Festival.

I belong to a Real Foods group that meets once a month to discuss various topics and, occasionally, we attend regional events. So, I was kind of excited to go a few hours away to find real Virginia maple syrup and try....oh, everything.

Don't get ahead of me here. I AM eating low(er) carbs meals than I have done in the past. I DO know that real maple syrup translates to real sugar, real carbs; however, I felt prepared to go and try many different maple-infused items (just to see what they are like) and I could reason all of this to be OK because I had a plan:

Three of us went on the trip. If we bought one of pretty much everything and shared it between us then I would end up with a bite or two of this or that and be OK by the end of the day. It was a great idea that could help me keep from that godawful full of junk foods feeling one often gets at these events by the end of the day.

Also, I wanted to make time to see things: visit crafts booths, tour a sugar camp, walk around, be active.

That was the plan and it went splendidly until I began tasting things.

Maple-covered peanuts from Laurel Fork Sapsuckers

I ate two handfuls of maple-candy covered peanuts. They were delicious! I bought a bag and have since had a few more (like 8 or so) and then I gave the rest to my in-laws so I wouldn't finish them. There are some ingredients in this bag that I stay away from with my diet so it was good to pass the yum on to someone else.

Then someone at the sugar camp tour told me there was this other amazing camp that makes maple donuts and pretty much sells out every year. Off to Puffinbarger's Sugar Camp we went...in search of these.

Puffinbarger Sugar Camp's Maple Donut

This looks angelic, right? But it tasted like blah to me. Now before you go thinking they don't know how to make a donut....think again. The shop was packed with people coming out the door and it took nearly an hour to have this particular donut in hand. This donut felt strange in my mouth and tasted gluey and slightly maple-like. It wasn't the BAM! WOW! confection I'd been convinced it would be. But why? The other two Real Foods enthusiasts couldn't get enough of them. Me? I was turned off.

Hmmm.

So we went for lunch a little while later...and had fried fish sandwiches from a local trout farm.

From a little stand outside Virginia Trout Company

The trout was so so tasty, I felt like I could eat again! And I would just ten or fifteen minutes later. See, one of our members is a vegetarian and needed a lunch that wasn't trout. Off we went to see about the highly acclaimed buckwheat pancakes we heard so many other tourists talk about.

Buckwheat pancakes with Virginia maple syrup

By this point, I wasn't hungry for syrup OR pancakes but decided I would try just to say I did. I couldn't finish this half a pancake, but I did guzzle down a pint of milk. Guess I needed that. The pancakes tasted good to me - they remind me a lot of raisin bran cereal flakes. Is that the way they are supposed to taste? Got me! But they did and I liked them enough, but not enough to finish. Like the donut, I just wasn't getting much from this stuff. Could we go back for more trout?

We spent the day looking at so many things and really enjoyed the people and the atmosphere of the festival...and it was a beautiful, beautiful day to be in the mountains. On the way home, there was ice cream and I thought, hmmm... maybe we could get one and split it (still had the game plan I began with!) And we did.

Ice cream stand just beside Sugar Town Antiques

And I could take about four bites of it before it was too much. It tasted amazingly good - like a dream, really - and I couldn't go on. What was UP with me?

After thinking this over for several days, I conclude that my palate has changed considerably. It really has. I can only guess that eating low carb has had this affect because I craved real food the entire day. I wanted more of that trout. I wanted spinach. I wanted salad.

Let's look at this day through the eyes of Wendy 2011: That bag of covered peanuts? I'd have at least eaten half of it. Maple donut? Psh, I would make sure two, if not three, would be mine. Trout sandwich? EWR. That sounds gross.  OMG Pancakes! Yes, I will have two. And I would finish them. I'd feel so full, but I would finish them. And then ice cream? To each their own. I'd want the entire cup. And even if it meant driving and eating with it melting all over, I'd spoon and drive. On a full stomach, gorging on sugar, a pre-diabetic.

So when I sometimes think this low carbs thing is too slow or isn't working, it may be helpful to remember the Highland County Maple Festival because Wendy 2013 just couldn't take it. Thank God, right?!