Energy

Today I went to see a counselor - I have been seeing at counselor at school for my depression. In addition to depression (maybe because of depression and anxiety) I also have been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. These health issues feed off each other and cause me to feel very tired and run down quite a bit. It seems I am always battling something. Ugh!

*If anybody ever has a need the university offers free counseling services to students, just contact the Office of Student Development which is on the second floor of UCEN.

http://www.umflint.edu/studentdevelopment/counseling_services.htm

I am seeing a new counselor this fall because my old one is on maternity leave. It is cool to get different perspectives on problems and get out of my own head, if you know what I mean. I went to see a counselor today to see if they could offer any advice about my low energy. I really want to get this exercise thing going but since the start of school I have been so tired. I basically just get home from school in the evening and crash. I have too much to do to just go home and crash! So now I am getting anxious because papers are starting to come due and my energy level is not where it should be. I am not going to let these feelings cast me into the downward spiral of depression.

This new counselor seems high energy and she had some great advice. She said when I go home and I am feeling like I just want to crash I should take a ten/fifteen minute walk a see if I can get some energy from that. She said it has been shown that short walks can help to boost energy and keep people on task with work, etc. I have heard this before but of course I have never tried it – I just crash and hope I kind find enough energy to do my work the next day. It seems easier at the time but then the next day comes along and more work is piled onto what I should have done the day before. Well I am going to try this short walk thing when I get home from school and see if it will help me get my energy level up. I made a deal with my counselor to try it three times this week. It fits in with this blog too because that will be the start of my getting some damn exercise.  

The top picture is one I took on a walk at Sleeping Bear Dunes in August. The bottom was taken on a walk on Mackinac Island over Laber Day. I can walk forever on Mackinac Island - well there are few alternatives, ha. My husband, stepson and I did the bridge walk this year too. If only all walks could be as beautiful and inspiring as these were.

Exploring Why

What makes a fat person? Why do people get fat? There are a number of reasons and it is most often a combination of reasons rather that just one thing. It is not always that they are lazy and stupid like a lot of people like to think. If you have never been fat, more than chubby, you just don’t know what it is like. You don’t know how it feels to be fat physically or emotionally. You don’t know how it feels to get fat or how difficult it is to lose weight. Period. It makes me mad when people think that being fat is just a fat person’s inability to eat right and exercise. No! There is a lot more than that going on. If it was just a matter of exercising or being active and eating less or eating better then a whole lot of fat people would be thin and a whole lot of skinny people would be fat. How many of you know a skinny person who doesn’t exercise and can down two Big Macs in one sitting? A skinny person who can and does eat everything they want (overeating) and stays skinny? I have known quite a few. My point is that a lot of factors go into the size of  a person.

Common Fat Stereotypes

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art58211.asp

A list of common stereotypes of obese people. I have heard them all and felt it and dealt with it too.

Why am I fat?

This is one of the things I need to explore in order to conquer my weight problem. I wasn’t always fat. I was a pretty skinny kid and really active. I guess I started putting on weight after puberty – around middle school. I remember kids in school started teasing me about my weight then. It is a cliché to write but kids are cruel. I wasn’t really fat then, just a little chubby. I let the teasing get me down. I became less active. I don’t know why but I can guess it has something to do with depression. I have always struggled with depression and I remember some ‘blue’ times that started around fifth grade and got increasingly worse through high school. I think I would have always struggled with depression, even if I had not put on weight but something else triggered the depression and the teasing made the depression worse, which started a vicious cycle of being depressed, turning to food for comfort – the fatter I got the more depressed I was, the less active I was and the more I isolated myself.

Picture of me when I was in middle school.

This sucks thinking about it. I pushed it down into the depths of my subconscious. I wish I hadn’t let people affect me like that. Plus there is something else. The thing that triggered my depression, I believe. I sometimes think that my getting fat was because of puberty and hormone changes and stuff. I don’t know much about it but I am sure it played a role. The more I think about that time in my life I think the trigger was actually the fact that I was sexually molested by a neighbor and family friend. UGH! I hate writing that. Somewhat of a bombshell or no? It seems so made up, so hackneyed. But it is true. I have not seen a lot of research about the correlation between eating disorders or obesity and molestation but if I had to guess I would think there is one. Most every thing I have ever seen about anorexia nervosa (most of it on TV, I admit), the sufferer has been molested. It is a control issue. I think it can go both ways – not eating and overeating. Either way they are ‘controlling’ their size. I need to find out more about overeating to see if I am on the right track. It seems there has been a lot of research and publicity about anorexia and not as much about overeating. Certainly both can be dangerous but I suppose anorexia is the more dangerous of the two, and perhaps a quicker way run into health problems.

I love this pic of me when I was young and thin, before depression. 

"Statistics Surrounding Child Sexual Abuse"

http://www.darkness2light.org/knowabout/statistics_2.asp

I just googled 'eating disorders and molestation' and came up with quite a bit of stuff. Not sure how reliable the sources are; I'll have to find out more about this issue.

Well those are some of the issues that get at why I am the way I am. I hope I do not come across as trying to make excuses – just trying to get to the heart of the matter so I can move on.

Getting Started

I have to get this blog thing going. As always I procrastinate…well I like to think of it as searching for inspiration, motivation. I am searching for it for weight loss as well as in my writing. I often find it at all the wrong times (like when I have to go to work and can’t do what I want to do or like at 2am when I have to get up at like 7am the next morning), when I find it at all. FML

I love that picture of Marilyn Monroe exercise. It kind of inspires me. So cute! Image of Marilyn Monroe taken from www.trueartworks.com

What do I envision for this blog?

Well I want to lose weight – a lot of it. I am tired of being fat. I am fat too – no getting around that. Haha, I could make some rude jokes here but I won’t. No, no, I am not just one of those skinny ass women who say in a high pitch voice and giggle after, “I am sooo fat!” Ugh. I hate that. I only wish I could be as ‘fat’ as them.

So I want to lose weight. I think keeping a blog about weight issues and my struggle to work out and eat healthier might keep my mind on this goal and keep me on track. That is my hope anyway. I actually thought about doing this a few months back but I could never get up enough motivation to actually do anything. Sad. I am a little scared about doing this now because it is hard for me to find the time and energy to work out while in school but I am also scared of not doing it. I am hitting middle age and fear that if I don’t do it now I will be fat forever. Not good for me - my body aches, I move too damn slow, and I find myself out of breath walking up just one flight of stairs. I need to get in shape in order to feel better. I am fairly healthy according to my Nurse Practitioner (blood sugar good, cholesterol good - yay me!) but I feel like a fat old grandma.

In addition to feeling better, being healthier, of course I want to look better. I feel like such a big frump most of the time. Times when I feel halfway pretty and feminine I get the feeling I am deluding myself. I am not a person who looks good with extra weight. Some people do look good fat – I just don’t happen to be one of them. I don’t even like to be photographed because when I look at the pictures later, I just say “eewwww!” That is not a good thing to do to oneself and it makes me feel pretty bad. I especially want to lose weight for graduation, which, if all goes right should be May 2011.

This is me on my wedding day in 2007. I wanted to be thin (or thinner) for that big day but of course I procrastinated and let that dream go. 

Me graduating with my 2 year degree in 2008. A big milestone for me and this is the only picture I will show people of it. I want to take lot of beautiful pictures the next time I graduate.

Goals

I suppose I should set some goals. Ideal weight loss is about a pound a week. I guess that would be about 16 pounds over the course of this semester. Sure, I’ll take that but I know I will get discouraged if I don’t lose more than that. I hope I can lose more, perhaps I could set my goal at 20 pounds by the end of the semester –  pretty modest in my eyes. I can re-evaluate as I go along. To do this I would like to try to get in some exercise everyday. I have a wii system and multiple exercise ‘games’ to work with as well as an exercise bike, many, many exercise tapes, and of course books. Plus I have a membership to Fitness USA as well as my membership to the school Rec Center. I must take advantage of that! So you see I have many options for exercising, nothing to it but to do it. Eating – that is a different thing altogether and I will leave that for another post, another day.