On being fat, part II.

Part II.: The background.

Gentle reader, let me reassure you that I didn't wake up one day, thinking that it would rock to gain some 10 kilos, or even better, 30. I was living my happy, borderline anorexic and severely depressed live (sarcasm), matters were slowly improving until my GP decided that my sick stomach is "just nerves", sent a note to my shrink who started me on some stuff that should work on the psychosomatic symptoms. Well, the antipsychotics didn't do anything about sick stomach as it was some intolerance thingy which resolved after I stopped eating processed meat and dairy. What the meds did was a nice case of false pregnancy. I gained maybe 15 kilos in some three months while having a busy life, walking across Florence and back, taking 8 hours of ballet classes per week and eating mostly fruits and vegetables in less than reasonable amounts.
After some poking and prodding and hearing Well, it may be some hormonal imbalance or brain cancer, young lady, rest assured that we'll find out, it was discovered that it was the meds I didn't need. I tossed them along with the shrink, the weight gain happily remained. I was still in the sorta okay territory, though. However, depression is a bitch and with every epizode that included lying flat and doing nothing, I gained some more. Two and half years ago, I landed in a job which was okay at the beginning, very stressful very soon but at least it was sort of exciting and new and now I'm mostly burnt out, left with severe depression, pretty crushing anxiety, a hefty dose of social phobia and a shitload of guilt for all this, my very mediocre work performance and a few more. I spent the last summer, me, once a passionate hiker and amateur botanist, either working or lying flat and doing nothing much - knitting, sleeping or watching crime shows is not enough to keep one in any sort of shape.

In theory, and as my mother would say, it's all about a lack of good will. If I exercised more and ate less, things would rock in no time. But. I'm a stranger in a small village, I'm a manager of that big building over there, everyone seems to know who I am. I can only run away to the woods, and alas, I don't have time for that. Or maybe I did if I could do my work more efficiently but I just have my limits because I'm pretty much burnt out.
In other words, before one starts randomly accusing all fat people of being gluttons with self-control, well, there may be another thing to it.

The previous bit was written at the beginning of June and remained laid aside to be finished tomorrow or day after tomorrow as on the 6th, two receptionists decided to give their notice and I needed to do the bills and stuff. Did I mention a lot of stress in my job? No? Well, there's a lot of stress that happens without warning so I forgot about half of a blogpost and life limped on.
I had a discussion about my horrendous eating habits with the shrink and he gave me a homework - he likes giving me homeworks, apparently - to stop eating things past their best before just because they're not bad yet but they need to be eaten up or week-old leftovers but, instead, something I actually like. And to try keeping it within the realm of reasonable because, let's be frank, everyone who lived through an eating disorder is a pretty decent nutritionist. I found some food intake tracking thingy that has a bajillion of useless functions and a few annoying bugs but within a few days, I found out that most likely, I don't get enough protein while having too much fat and sugar. And for sedentary people, it's better to gorge on protein instead of the two others. I bought a bucket of quark and well, I eat a lot of quark. Low energy density so I can eat a lot which is important. Give me a head of iceberg lettuce and I'm all happy and full. Give me a dessert of the same energy value and I'll be hungry and frustrated. So, a lot of quark.
At which point I could probably start touting it as a cure-all because without moving much, I lost some three kilos and my GERD almost stopped acting up.

And all fat acceptance aside, if I could choose, I'd prefer to be stick thin, thankyouvery much, and I need to lose some ten kilos so that I'd be able to get a dress made from one length of fabric, not a dress and a lot of leftovers from two lengths. At the end, it may be all about money after all. And now I'm getting ranty so I'll grab those 12 bottles of wine, take them to my den for tasting and to write the goddamn wine list. By the way, do you know how much sugar does wine contain? A lot. And on the top of that, I have some grapes that need to be eaten up...

Sometimes I feel like I'm 80

Today's breakfast:

Magnesium citrate and some other magnesium preparation, for a total of around 1 g of Mg, as per prescription.
Lansoprazol to inhibit the production of gastric juices and itopride to make the stuff pass further down faster. Yay GERD.
Fluoxetine, a generic brother of the well-known Prozac for depression.
Clonazepam for anxiety.

Don't worry, there won't be any rant about how mainstream medicine stuffs me with pills and I don't feel great anyway. I actually find this somewhat funny for no reasonable reason.

The neurologist said that when one is stressed, the body needs much more magnesium and that I'm pretty deficient. The question was What to do with the goddamn tinnitus, for that matter. Tinnitus is thriving but my wonky arm is less wonky, and it is a nerve thing, not actually pain but an annoying feeling, somewhere between itch and pain, not very pronounced but almost constant, from the shoulder to the outer of my hand. Apparently, depression makes one fall apart physically as well.

On being fat, part I.

Part I.: purely physical. Let's be frank. I reached some 113 kilos, of which 50 is pure unadulterated lard - and yes, I have heavy bones. I have the body composition analysis to prove it. It's sorta one and half kilos above average for my sex, age and inactivity group so it's negligible.
How does it feel? Well, crappy. I'm all for HAES, fat acceptance, non-discrimination, empowerment and all this stuff but being some 35 kilos overweight, I feel crappy. For now, I'll skip musings on beauty ideal, prejudices and this sort of stuff but I'll go straight to the matter of matter.

There are little annoying problems, bodily problems that may appear somewhat disgusting to the gentle soul. Take the Decorative fat rings (DFR). The skin folds trap sweat and one gets rashes and itchy stuff. I hear that antiperspirant may work but I sweat so much that it's only a bit of help. The same can be said about inner thighs. Ouch. And yes, the eternal question of How do you manage to wipe your arse, usually formulated by two people watching a third, fat person, as Hey, look at that whale, do you think she's able to wipe her arse. Well, depends on one's flexibility and length of arms, in which department I don't have that much problem and my DFR, while considerable, still don't prevent me from bending over, if clumsily.
Speaking of clumsiness: Yes, that. One needs to handle the various protruding masses when doing things. I don't look exactly elegant when I'm picking something from the floor.
And the pains. My joints complain somewhat. Then there's pain. I walk a kilometre and my legs hurt in the overexerted way, it's the bitter-sour pain of doing too much of a too heavy work, not that pleasant minty-sweet pain of getting the blood flow faster and having achieved something.
And, it takes some energy to feed the mass. Yes, I noticed that I'm more hungry than the rest of the family at a last week's outing.

And... lather, rinse, repeat. I walk around the town - my calves and back hurt. Around a corner, my calves and back still hurt. I do some shopping and the stuff is annoyingly heavy to carry. Also, my calves and back keep hurting. I walk the stairs up and down a few times, as our house is somewhat vertical and I'm short of breath. Also, my calves still hurt, my feet are crampy (no idea why) and it feels bad. Next time: the background.