[weekend update]
1. Yesterday, I went to the Japanese cultural festival on the south side of town. I hadn't even realised Santa Fe had a Japanese culture interest group, but I was amazed by how huge the thing was, relatively speaking (considering the population of Santa Fe residents ranges between 50K and 70K depending on the time of year). I got to participate in a tea ceremony, which was awesome, and I got to see a group performing traditional Japanese dance with the fancy kimonos and fans and the intricate hair and makeup (and who would've thought middle-aged men could make such convincing geishas?), and I had meat buns and inhaled yakitori to my heart's content and...yeah, overall it was just really nice. Plus which I actually ran into one of my kids there, who was working, and he was happy to see me, and it was just...cute. I love how a lot of my students have started to feel like family.
2. Have been working on triopuri fic, as well as a couple others. I'm very excited for teamtheme - FUDOUMINE this month!! - and also to get going on this week's meganebucks challenge. And daisy_chan poked me about doing cactuscontinuum, so I may have to go check that out. Also, rikkai_exchange assignments should be going out in a couple days, and I understand balls_it_up fics are going to start posting soon....despite the end of the manga, I think PoT is far from over.
When HP ended, I was kind of sad about it, but then, I wasn't really in fandom so much anymore. And yet I've watched the fandom keep going as strong as ever, even though a lot of my friends, including myself, have moved onto other fandoms in large part. I think once you're in HP though, you never leave, and I certainly feel that way about myself - I keep being tempted to write more fic, though I'm never really sure what.
PoT seems like it could be much of the same. I mean, with all those characters...Konomi sure as hell didn't tie up the ends for everyone, seeing as he didn't even really tie up the ends for Seigaku, let alone Rikkai. And for me, really, PoT was never about the story, so I don't really feel like anything's ended. Granted, I'll be sad when there are no more myus or CDs or OVA or whatever to look forward to, but I think there will always be fic, and art, and (hopefully) doujin, so I'm not worried. :D Also, I understand he has plans for future crack mangas, and also that there might be more stuff coming out in the volumes (maybe we'll get a 50.5 or something!), so we'll see. Though frankly, I don't really care if he tells us things for certain or not. I like having those loose ends open, and the freedom to do what I want without the possibility of being disproved. As much as new canon makes me happy, there is such a thing as too much new canon. (Are you listening, JKR?)
It's hard to believe that this time last year, I had barely written anything in two years. *clings to muses*
3. Back to the doctor again tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous, but I'm hoping that things turn out well and we can work on getting this shit fixed. I'm tired of it. If it means taking Metformin, or cutting sugar out of my diet altogether, or whatever, I'll do it. I just want to be healthy.
I used to turn up my nose at even taking multivitamins. I always took my little Flinstones chewables when I was a kid, because they tasted good, but what was the point, I asked myself, if I was eating healthy meals that my mother cooked? And then there was college food, which was healthier than most (I shudder to remember what the food was like at my high school) if a lot more oily, and then take-out in Toronto when I was way too tired to cook (which was ALL THE TIME), and before you knew it, it was scary how unhealthy I was. The problem with having an endocrine disorder is that it's all connected, which means that as soon as I hit puberty, my body became thoroughly fucked up and never recovered. Imbalanced sex hormones that regulated just in time for my thyroid disease to manifest itself, and that also resulted in severe anaemia that led to easy exhaustion and a resentment toward exercise because I couldn't fucking run the ten-minute mile without fainting and I was so tired of being laughed at by my classmates, which in turn led to a more sedentary lifestyle, which led to insulin resistance coupled with depression and a desire to sleep all the time, which made it worse, until one day I stepped on the scale and read 220lbs and almost had a heart attack. (Fortunately, not literally.)
I was lucky that I managed to catch it before it went completely out of control. I actually joined Jenny Craig (this was after my mother had put me on Atkins - god, never again - and Weight Watchers and so on and so forth which of course only makes it worse), and, by eating packaged food for every single meal and in between, I managed to lose 50lbs. 170 is still a lot, but it was a hell of a lot less than 220, and comparatively, I felt amazing. But there are three problems with Jenny Craig. First of all, packaged food. Yes, it's good portion control, and it's carefully balanced to make sure you get the nutrition and the food groups that you need, but it's packaged, and it's just not good for you to be eating frozen food all the time. It made me crave fresh fruits and vegetables (but mostly fruits) like you wouldn't believe, and I was told I was only allowed to eat fruit Very Rarely, because it had sugar in it. So that wasn't working for me so much. Second, the FDA's food pyramid says you should be eating 6-11 servings of grains/complex carbs a day. That's all well and good, but when said grains are...white rice, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, pancakes with white flour, etc etc etc? Not great for someone prone to insulin resistance (even though I didn't know it at the time). So even while I was losing weight, my body was making more and more insulin to process all the carbs I was putting into it, which would then come back to bite me in the ass. Third, they require you to take these protein supplements in the form of either bars or shakes, which to me said that I wasn't getting enough protein in my food, and that seemed problematic. Oh yeah, and it's expensive. So needless to say, I quit that after about nine months, and still managed to maintain my weight fairly well for awhile cooking my own meals.
And then I got sick again.
Insulin resistance, is what my endocrinologist told me a few weeks ago. I wasn't aware of this at the time, because I'd never really had a steady endocrinologist - I'd just been treated through GPs, generally clinics, and had been told that I had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (an autoimmune disorder) in 2001, and then that I potentially had PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) in 2005, and I'd been treated on and off for estrogen imbalances since I was ten and for depression since I was sixteen. I didn't know that all of these things were all related to each other, and I certainly didn't know that all of these things were just lurking there waiting to compound each other. If even one of them slips out of control, then all of the others go batshit insane, and by the beginning of 2007, I was pretty heavily depressed, I was tired all the time, and I'd gained back 20lbs. And the biggest problem with insulin resistance is that it actually resists any attempts for you to lose weight. Insulin resistance is not like diabetes, when your blood sugar is too high. My blood sugar is just fine. But my cells don't process insulin properly, which means that in order to process the sugar I put into my body, my pancreas makes about three times as much insulin as it should have to. Insulin stores fat. It also makes me really tired all the time so even 20 minutes of exercise completely wipes me out.
It would seem then that something like the Atkins diet again would make sense, since it makes you cut back on your carbs hardcore. But the problem with that? Animal fats and meats all have cholesterol. Low thyroid function makes you unable to properly process cholesterol. So then...why don't I switch to a diet that's mostly vegetables? Because my iron is ridiculously low, and there is no way I can eat five pounds of spinach a day. On top of that, with endocrine disorders, you already have practically no metabolism, so the sugar is necessary to kick-start your metabolism in the first place or else you just get really exhausted and end up lying there in a food coma, but if you eat even a little bit too much of the sugar, you end up in a sugar coma instead. It's like a math problem every single time I want to eat - how many grains of rice can I eat with my chicken to make sure I can actually digest the chicken without the rice overtaking my digestive process and putting me to sleep? Eating whole grains and high-fibre carbohydrates and the like helps, but not a tonne. It's to the point where a lot of the time I have to make myself eat because I loathe the way I feel completely useless afterwards. It's a shame too because I love to cook, but I look at my plate of grilled chicken and wild rice and numbers flash across my vision, glycemic index, carbohydrate count, caloric content, do I have enough vitamins in this today, and I almost want to just dump the whole thing down the sink.
For me, it really is impossible to eat my daily requirement of a lot of things, in some cases because I need about 500% of the daily requirement just to break even, and in others because I have no idea what my daily requirement even is. Between the insulin resistance, the malfunctioning thyroid, the malfunctioning ovaries, and the malfunctioning adrenal/pituitary glands, I end up really low on iron, B12, and vitamin A especially, among many other things, and a lot of the things I do eat I don't process properly anyway. On top of that, the doctors have me on a bunch of medication - replacement thyroid hormone, replacement estrogen/progesterone, and a dopamine reuptake inhibitor - which is all well and good to treat the symptoms, but I want to fix the problem. I hate taking a bunch of different things that are all treating facets of the same issue. Metabolic Syndrome is perhaps one of the most frustrating disorders out there because there's no way to tell where it started, and then once it's going, it's like a snowball rolling down a hill. So you try to get the symptoms under control and then get to the problem at hand, because it's all you can do. The best way to cure metabolic syndrome is weight loss, but without a metabolism, how do you lose weight? Granted, I've managed to drop about 5lbs over the past couple months, but that's nothing, and not nearly enough to make any real, noticeable difference, and that's with exercising 4-6 times a week and trying to eat as healthy as I know how.
So. Needless to say, I would be delighted if tomorrow my doctor can give me a plan of attack. I'm tired of being fat no matter what I do (and granted I'm not huge, but it's enough that it makes it difficult for me to find clothes that fit properly, and I definitely don't feel comfortable in my own skin), and I'm tired of being tired, and I want to be able to sit down to a nice meal without worrying if I'm going to be out for the count for the next two or three hours. Most of all, I just want to know. It's the not knowing part that frustrates me most of all.
I was thinking about making a post later this week about my visit with a herbalist and the supplements I'm taking. If anyone's interested, do let me know and I'll be sure to. :D Also, I just want to say that I really am happy. I might complain about my health a lot, and I might be tired and oftentimes upset about it, but I can't complain too much. Health aside, things are going great, and I know how lucky I am in life, especially to have all you guys to share it with. ♥
Hope everyone had an amazing and relaxing weekend! <3333
2. Have been working on triopuri fic, as well as a couple others. I'm very excited for teamtheme - FUDOUMINE this month!! - and also to get going on this week's meganebucks challenge. And daisy_chan poked me about doing cactuscontinuum, so I may have to go check that out. Also, rikkai_exchange assignments should be going out in a couple days, and I understand balls_it_up fics are going to start posting soon....despite the end of the manga, I think PoT is far from over.
When HP ended, I was kind of sad about it, but then, I wasn't really in fandom so much anymore. And yet I've watched the fandom keep going as strong as ever, even though a lot of my friends, including myself, have moved onto other fandoms in large part. I think once you're in HP though, you never leave, and I certainly feel that way about myself - I keep being tempted to write more fic, though I'm never really sure what.
PoT seems like it could be much of the same. I mean, with all those characters...Konomi sure as hell didn't tie up the ends for everyone, seeing as he didn't even really tie up the ends for Seigaku, let alone Rikkai. And for me, really, PoT was never about the story, so I don't really feel like anything's ended. Granted, I'll be sad when there are no more myus or CDs or OVA or whatever to look forward to, but I think there will always be fic, and art, and (hopefully) doujin, so I'm not worried. :D Also, I understand he has plans for future crack mangas, and also that there might be more stuff coming out in the volumes (maybe we'll get a 50.5 or something!), so we'll see. Though frankly, I don't really care if he tells us things for certain or not. I like having those loose ends open, and the freedom to do what I want without the possibility of being disproved. As much as new canon makes me happy, there is such a thing as too much new canon. (Are you listening, JKR?)
It's hard to believe that this time last year, I had barely written anything in two years. *clings to muses*
3. Back to the doctor again tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous, but I'm hoping that things turn out well and we can work on getting this shit fixed. I'm tired of it. If it means taking Metformin, or cutting sugar out of my diet altogether, or whatever, I'll do it. I just want to be healthy.
I used to turn up my nose at even taking multivitamins. I always took my little Flinstones chewables when I was a kid, because they tasted good, but what was the point, I asked myself, if I was eating healthy meals that my mother cooked? And then there was college food, which was healthier than most (I shudder to remember what the food was like at my high school) if a lot more oily, and then take-out in Toronto when I was way too tired to cook (which was ALL THE TIME), and before you knew it, it was scary how unhealthy I was. The problem with having an endocrine disorder is that it's all connected, which means that as soon as I hit puberty, my body became thoroughly fucked up and never recovered. Imbalanced sex hormones that regulated just in time for my thyroid disease to manifest itself, and that also resulted in severe anaemia that led to easy exhaustion and a resentment toward exercise because I couldn't fucking run the ten-minute mile without fainting and I was so tired of being laughed at by my classmates, which in turn led to a more sedentary lifestyle, which led to insulin resistance coupled with depression and a desire to sleep all the time, which made it worse, until one day I stepped on the scale and read 220lbs and almost had a heart attack. (Fortunately, not literally.)
I was lucky that I managed to catch it before it went completely out of control. I actually joined Jenny Craig (this was after my mother had put me on Atkins - god, never again - and Weight Watchers and so on and so forth which of course only makes it worse), and, by eating packaged food for every single meal and in between, I managed to lose 50lbs. 170 is still a lot, but it was a hell of a lot less than 220, and comparatively, I felt amazing. But there are three problems with Jenny Craig. First of all, packaged food. Yes, it's good portion control, and it's carefully balanced to make sure you get the nutrition and the food groups that you need, but it's packaged, and it's just not good for you to be eating frozen food all the time. It made me crave fresh fruits and vegetables (but mostly fruits) like you wouldn't believe, and I was told I was only allowed to eat fruit Very Rarely, because it had sugar in it. So that wasn't working for me so much. Second, the FDA's food pyramid says you should be eating 6-11 servings of grains/complex carbs a day. That's all well and good, but when said grains are...white rice, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, pancakes with white flour, etc etc etc? Not great for someone prone to insulin resistance (even though I didn't know it at the time). So even while I was losing weight, my body was making more and more insulin to process all the carbs I was putting into it, which would then come back to bite me in the ass. Third, they require you to take these protein supplements in the form of either bars or shakes, which to me said that I wasn't getting enough protein in my food, and that seemed problematic. Oh yeah, and it's expensive. So needless to say, I quit that after about nine months, and still managed to maintain my weight fairly well for awhile cooking my own meals.
And then I got sick again.
Insulin resistance, is what my endocrinologist told me a few weeks ago. I wasn't aware of this at the time, because I'd never really had a steady endocrinologist - I'd just been treated through GPs, generally clinics, and had been told that I had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (an autoimmune disorder) in 2001, and then that I potentially had PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) in 2005, and I'd been treated on and off for estrogen imbalances since I was ten and for depression since I was sixteen. I didn't know that all of these things were all related to each other, and I certainly didn't know that all of these things were just lurking there waiting to compound each other. If even one of them slips out of control, then all of the others go batshit insane, and by the beginning of 2007, I was pretty heavily depressed, I was tired all the time, and I'd gained back 20lbs. And the biggest problem with insulin resistance is that it actually resists any attempts for you to lose weight. Insulin resistance is not like diabetes, when your blood sugar is too high. My blood sugar is just fine. But my cells don't process insulin properly, which means that in order to process the sugar I put into my body, my pancreas makes about three times as much insulin as it should have to. Insulin stores fat. It also makes me really tired all the time so even 20 minutes of exercise completely wipes me out.
It would seem then that something like the Atkins diet again would make sense, since it makes you cut back on your carbs hardcore. But the problem with that? Animal fats and meats all have cholesterol. Low thyroid function makes you unable to properly process cholesterol. So then...why don't I switch to a diet that's mostly vegetables? Because my iron is ridiculously low, and there is no way I can eat five pounds of spinach a day. On top of that, with endocrine disorders, you already have practically no metabolism, so the sugar is necessary to kick-start your metabolism in the first place or else you just get really exhausted and end up lying there in a food coma, but if you eat even a little bit too much of the sugar, you end up in a sugar coma instead. It's like a math problem every single time I want to eat - how many grains of rice can I eat with my chicken to make sure I can actually digest the chicken without the rice overtaking my digestive process and putting me to sleep? Eating whole grains and high-fibre carbohydrates and the like helps, but not a tonne. It's to the point where a lot of the time I have to make myself eat because I loathe the way I feel completely useless afterwards. It's a shame too because I love to cook, but I look at my plate of grilled chicken and wild rice and numbers flash across my vision, glycemic index, carbohydrate count, caloric content, do I have enough vitamins in this today, and I almost want to just dump the whole thing down the sink.
For me, it really is impossible to eat my daily requirement of a lot of things, in some cases because I need about 500% of the daily requirement just to break even, and in others because I have no idea what my daily requirement even is. Between the insulin resistance, the malfunctioning thyroid, the malfunctioning ovaries, and the malfunctioning adrenal/pituitary glands, I end up really low on iron, B12, and vitamin A especially, among many other things, and a lot of the things I do eat I don't process properly anyway. On top of that, the doctors have me on a bunch of medication - replacement thyroid hormone, replacement estrogen/progesterone, and a dopamine reuptake inhibitor - which is all well and good to treat the symptoms, but I want to fix the problem. I hate taking a bunch of different things that are all treating facets of the same issue. Metabolic Syndrome is perhaps one of the most frustrating disorders out there because there's no way to tell where it started, and then once it's going, it's like a snowball rolling down a hill. So you try to get the symptoms under control and then get to the problem at hand, because it's all you can do. The best way to cure metabolic syndrome is weight loss, but without a metabolism, how do you lose weight? Granted, I've managed to drop about 5lbs over the past couple months, but that's nothing, and not nearly enough to make any real, noticeable difference, and that's with exercising 4-6 times a week and trying to eat as healthy as I know how.
So. Needless to say, I would be delighted if tomorrow my doctor can give me a plan of attack. I'm tired of being fat no matter what I do (and granted I'm not huge, but it's enough that it makes it difficult for me to find clothes that fit properly, and I definitely don't feel comfortable in my own skin), and I'm tired of being tired, and I want to be able to sit down to a nice meal without worrying if I'm going to be out for the count for the next two or three hours. Most of all, I just want to know. It's the not knowing part that frustrates me most of all.
I was thinking about making a post later this week about my visit with a herbalist and the supplements I'm taking. If anyone's interested, do let me know and I'll be sure to. :D Also, I just want to say that I really am happy. I might complain about my health a lot, and I might be tired and oftentimes upset about it, but I can't complain too much. Health aside, things are going great, and I know how lucky I am in life, especially to have all you guys to share it with. ♥
Hope everyone had an amazing and relaxing weekend! <3333