Sleep! Give me sleep!

[lexin]

I am exhausted. My psychiatrist increased my anti-psychotic and I feel as if I've been stuffed with cotton wool – weak and floppy and squashable. I'm struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

A friend from the union came round and borrowed a frock I made for a convention. She's going to a Renaissance wedding and needed something to wear; I offered as I hardly wear those frocks. It was a bit stretched on her and she suggested that we both go on a diet. I don't feel much like dieting – I've got enough to think about without adding that.

I was too weak to say so, and now I'm feeling guilty about every mouthful, while still eating as much as I usually do. So that's got me precisely nowhere. Suggestions that I 'just eat less' will be treated with the contempt they deserve – if it were that easy, I'd have done it already. Besides, I know nobody IRL who's dieted and kept the weight off. There may be such people, but I'm not one of them and I've never actually met one of them.

I want to go to sleep!

Comments

[manna]

Besides, I know nobody IRL who's dieted and kept the weight off. There may be such people, but I'm not one of them and I've never actually met one of them.

They pretty much don't exist. The few exceptions tend to be people who refocus their entire lives around food and weight and develop a kind of controlled eating disorder which allows them to starve themselves for the rest of their lives, which is neither mentally nor physically healthy. Dieting is pointless and does nothing but make people miserable. Don't do it.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I think actionreplay is right and dieting simply isn't for me right now. If ever. Even my doctor said we'd deal with my weight when I was over this hump of depression/depressive illness/bipolar/whatever the fuck is wrong with me.

[bethac.livejournal.com]

I do eat four or five times a day, just smaller portions, spread thru the day, and that has helped alot. I am finally seeing it come off, but it doesn't happen, for me at least, overnight. The biggest thing I do that was the hardest is no eating or drinking after 7:00pm. If I get thirsty only water. That was the hardest to maintain (I am not a water lover), but now after a year I don't think about it. Also, I give myself a chocolate treat at the end of the day (before 7) either a candybar or icecream or something, because I won't be miserable and it gives me a lift. Also, I love chocolate and knowing I can have a nice candybar (not a piece, but a regular size bar, or a handful of m&ms) or something at the end of the day makes it easier to not have something during the rest of the day. If I have something during the day, I don't eat my candy at the end.
Anyway, that's how I am doing it, and slowly it is coming off. And staying off (not a huge amount, but slow and steady).
People who do crazy things to lose fast are crazy. And unhappy.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I think actionreplay is right and I'm just not in a place where even that much makes sense. I need to concentrate on the illness first, and tackle the other stuff later.

[actionreplay.livejournal.com]

I suggest that as you are currently dealing with a change in medication and a serious illness, that you banish all diet talk to the Delta Quadrant, where Janeway can kick its ass.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting it into perspective for me. I needed to be told that.

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

Anyone who tells you to "eat less" should be, first of all, taken out and forced to have their eating metered. As with most thin people, they simply eat as much or more than the average fat person but their metabolism is very bad and they burn up fuel. We pudgy folk come from people whose metabolism had to adjust due to exigent circumstances (like famine, extreme exercise needed to survive, etc). It's much harder for fat people to lose weight than it is for thin people. My own obesity doctor told me that. He's very slender and runs in marathons so he's not in denial. :)

You have enough to deal with right now. If you want to deal with diet issues, that's for you alone to decide and down the road a-ways. BTW, next time you see that "eat less" person, please spit in her/his face and tell them it was from me. :)

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the support! :-)

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

It's much harder for fat people to lose weight than it is for thin people.

The reverse is also true. In the fifties the US army did some studies trying to get soldiers to gain weight and the men were consuming somewhere around 10,000 calories a day (iirc) before they started gaining more than about 20 pounds. Up to that point their metabolism just compensated for the extra food.

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

You probably shouldn't be dieting. Not now.

One thing that does work, though, if only in the short term, is eating a lot of high-fibre, low calorie stuff. Salads, high-fibre crispbreads, vegetables, brown rice. The theory is that it takes more energy for the body to digest it than such foods actually contain, so you can stuff your face and still lose a little weight, without putting your body into starvation mode (which is the reason the weight never stays off if you're naturally not a stick-figure).

But if you don't want to diet, don't. It's the only four-letter-word I firmly believe should be censored.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

The theory is that it takes more energy for the body to digest it than such foods actually contain,

I doubt that theory. It would mean that if you lived only on brown rice and vegetables, you'd starve faster than if you had nothing to eat at all.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I'm coming to that conclusion myself. I'll have to tell my friend that she's on her own.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

Diets are mostly a way to make oneself miserable.

They might help you fit into that specific dress at that specific date, but that's a lot of effort for irrelevant gain.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I agree with you. I once lost 60lbs dieting, but I've regained it all.

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Meds side effects just suck--especially when they make your head all wooly. I hate that so much and I'm sorry you're dealing with it. I hope it subsides soon.

Until I get all my health problems straightened out I can't bother about losing weight. It just doesn't happen no matter what I do or how little I eat. Also the meds kind of screw that up too.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I don't think the meds are helping, to be honest. Just putting one foot in front of the other is taking my whole attention.

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I've had that with several SSRIs/SNRIs. They didn't make me better--just dazed and fat. :/

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I can only hope that the mood stabiliser is better. Because the next stage (if my liver's up to it, and there's no reason it shouldn't be) is to come off the SNRI and onto a mood stabiliser.

I'm so looking forward to that. /sarcasm

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds like great fun. :/ Coming off lexpro was so horrible for me. Going off zoloft wasn't nearly so hard. And I don't think cymbalta will give that much trouble if I ever go off of it. At least it seems to be working and keeping me from feeling really depressed and anxious.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

You're probably not in the right mood/state to diet now, but is there a perspective for you at some stage to be able to take three weeks AND spend a couple thousand quid? Because, having dieted & regained all my life, I have found a German clinic where I not only lost weight, I got (relatively) fitter, in better shape (all lab tests bearing testimony to it, too), happier, and craving vegetables for something like a year after doing the cure. Do email (shezan at gmx dot net) if you're interested at all!

It's very nice, in a large garden overlooking Lake Constance, they speak all sorts of known languages, with a goodish bit of culture vulturing thrown in, and they're no mad quacks

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I'll bear this in mind for when I'm in a better state of health.

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

I'm timidly raising my hand *G* - I did get a kick start on losing weight when I had my lung surgery, but in the two years since then, I've routinely counted calories and not only kept the weight off that I lost back in 2007, but lost an additional 20 pounds and kept that off. Well, so far. I wouldn't call it dieting though, because it isn't. I only count calories so that I know if I can afford to eat another cupcake on a particular day or not, as an example. I did change the way I eat and what I eat, but that was easier than it should have been because after I got my appetite back (somewhere about six mos. after the surgery) my taste buds had changed radically.

So, lose weight with routine dieting - no way. Fall off a virtual cliff, that worked.

I think a more important question is - do you feel comfortable in your own skin? Is your BP and so on within good limits? Can you move around and do what you want to/need to? I think that's the key, rather than what a scale says. I kept on with losing weight because I was miserable physically and I wanted to be able to run around with my granddaughter instead of watching her play.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

It does not seem two years since your lung surgery.

I do need to watch what I eat, but I'm in no fit mental state for dieting, even if I thought diets work, which I don't.

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about dieting right now. It often leads to literally starving yourself (this is why most people gain the weight back eventually - the second you start consuming calories again your body thinks you're coming out of a famine and stores energy accordingly) and you need to be spending the effort and care that it takes to not fall into that trap dealing with the other stuff you've got going on.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice - I'm coming round to this point of view.

[gloria1.livejournal.com]

I think you have more than enough to deal with at the moment than any sort of weight or diet issue. One crisis at a time!

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that's what my doctor said, too. Sensible plan.